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The number of public sector employees increased by 3.5 per cent over the year to June 2023, according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Bjorn Jarvis, ABS head of labour statistics, said: “There was a total of $215 billion of wages paid during the 2022-23 financial year, across all levels of governments, an increase of 6.9 per cent from the year before.

“This increase in wages reflects a combination of underlying wage growth, the increase in employment and other compositional changes such as hours worked.

“This is the first official set of annual public sector employment and earnings statistics released by the ABS using Single Touch Payroll data from the Australian Taxation Office. This information replaces figures that were previously based on a survey and will also be used in the Labour Account estimates for the public and private sectors.”

State government continued to be the largest public sector level, accounting for around 77 per cent of public sector employment, followed by commonwealth government (14 per cent) and local government (9 per cent).

State government employment also showed the highest growth between June 2022 and June 2023, rising 3.6 per cent, to 1.9 million employees. The $165.7 billion in wages paid during 2022-23 represented a rise of 7.6 per cent compared to 2021-22.

Commonwealth government employment grew by 3.2 per cent, to 350,300 employees. Around $33.9 billion in wages were paid, which was 4.9 per cent higher than 2021-22.

Local government continued to have the lowest employment of the three levels, and saw the lowest increase in the year to June 2023, up by 2.7 per cent to 208,200 employees. These employees were paid $15.3 billion, a 4.3 per cent increase on the year before.

The public sector is dominated by three key industries: Public administration and safety, Education and training, and Health care and social assistance. These industries make up about 90 per cent of public sector employment and wages.

Of these three industries, Education and training showed the highest growth in employment in June, an increase of 5.1 per cent to 737,500 employees. The Health care and social assistance and the Public administration and safety industries both had similar increases of 2.7 per cent to 615,400 thousand employees and 2.4 per cent to 817,600 employees respectively.

The largest growth in earnings of the three industries was in Health care and social assistance at 8.9 per cent (to $57.6 billion). This was closely followed by Education and training at 7.5 per cent (to $53.8 billion), and Public administration and safety at 4.7 per cent (to $76.9 billion).