This was published 7 years ago
Queensland's public service grows by 3000 in three months
By Felicity Caldwell
The Queensland public sector grew by more than 3000 full time equivalent employees in the past three months.
New figures reveal there were 215,926.84 full time equivalent public sector employees in the March quarter.
1 William Street may be filled with public servants, but most work outside the inner-city.Credit: Tammy Law
That was a growth of 3,287.57 FTEs since the December 2016 quarter, or 1.55 per cent.
It compares with the growth for the same quarter in 2016 of just more than 4000 employees, the figures in the latest Public service workforce statistics reveal.
Queensland Health accounted for the greatest increase, with a net increase of more than 2500 full time employees, a 3.14 per cent increase.
Within Health, the hospital and health services made up the bulk of new employees (2300.93 FTEs) with 1965.68 of those in frontline roles.
The figures showed:
- Queensland Police had a net decrease of 90.35 FTE positions.
- Almost two-thirds of the public sector workforce was located outside Brisbane.
- Just under 20 per cent of employees were located in the Brisbane inner-city statistical area.
- More than nine in 10 public servants were engaged in frontline or frontline support roles.
- Women accounted for 66.72 per cent of the total FTE workforce.
While females and males received the same salary for the same classification job, the FTE average annual earnings for female employees was $9119 less than men.
Women were generally in lower paid jobs than men, with 70.08 per cent of AO2 to AO6 and equivalent roles held by females.
In senior executive and equivalent roles, 35.91 per cent were women.
The average age of Queensland public service workers was 44.1 years.
Opposition Deputy Leader Deb Frecklington said employee expenses under Labor had grown out of control.
"Despite paying more, Queenslanders are getting so much less," Ms Frecklington said.
But in tabling the report during estimates, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said her government was making record investments in health and education.
"Since the election, we have delivered additional staff including 3170 nurses, 1190 doctors, 3095 extra teachers and teacher aides, 330 police, 250 ambulance officers and 205 fire and emergency services officers," she said.
"Not only have we had to restore frontline services from the LNP cuts, we have been planning for growth."
In May, an Audit Office report said the Queensland government was facing "significant financial risk" due to an increase in the number of highly paid public servants in recent years.
In 2016, Treasurer Curtis Pitt promised to keep growth in the public service, on average over the forward estimates, aligned with population growth.
But the 2017-18 budget revealed population growth would track at 1.5 per cent while growth in full time employees would grow at 1.7 per cent.