Raraunga Ohumahi 2022 — Umanga Workforce Data 2022 — Occupation

Occupational profile of workforce

Public Service employees were engaged in a wide range of jobs spread across 251 different occupations in 2022. These can be divided into 10 broad occupational groups as shown in the following chart. The 2 largest groups are inspectors and regulatory officers and social, health and education workers, accounting for 36.2% of the public service workforce.

Between 2021 and 2022, the Public Service workforce (FTEs) decreased by 715 or -1.2%.

Inspectors and regulatory officers and social, health education workers continue to be the two largest occupation groups in the Public Service. Changes include a reduction in the number of social, health and education workers (down 385 FTEs, or 3.5%), contact centre workers (down 335 FTEs, or 6.9%) and inspectors and regulatory officers (down 321 FTEs or 2.8%).  Proportionally, the largest occupation change was for ICT professionals and technicians (down 9.5% or 222 FTE). Around a third of the reduction in social, health and education workers, and ICT professionals and technicians was due to machinery of government changes arising from the Health Reforms.   

Among the occupation groups, managers and information professionals had the largest increases in staff numbers in 2022. Some agencies have reported that their increase in managerial staff in 2022 did not reflect changes in roles (i.e., they were due to changes in how they coded their roles to occupation groups, rather than recruitment of new managers).

The following table shows occupation groups by Public Service department for the last 6 years.

Just over 40% of public servants who responded to the Te Taunaki Public Service Census 2021 survey have customer-facing roles, working directly with the public, external customers and clients, or people in their care. Of those who responded to the survey, two-thirds of customer-facing workers were female.