Workforce Data – Long-term trends

The chart below shows changes in the number of employees in the Public Service going back to 1913. The size of the Public Service workforce has grown since then as the New Zealand population that it serves has grown. It has also changed over time as the scope of services it provides has changed.  

Long-term viz data(XLSX, 14 KB)

Public Service workforce as proportion of population, 1913 onwards

A key factor that affects the size of the Public Service workforce is population growth - its size is related to the population it serves. The following chart controls for changes in population size, by representing the Public Service workforce as a percentage of the population. 

Controlling for population size allows us to more clearly see some key historical changes in the size of the Public Service workforce. These changes are linked to wider economic and social changes that have driven changes in the scope of public services. 

In 1913, the Public Service workforce was 0.4% of the New Zealand population. From its beginnings in 1840, the Public Service grew from a handful of officials to nearly 5,000 public servants by 1913. This increase was driven by a number of factors, including a growing population, the expansion of government activities into new areas, and the abolition of provincial government (see A frontier bureaucracy: 1840-1912). 

Some key time periods visible in this chart are: 

• A period of rapid growth between 1936 and 1944. This growth was accelerated by the expansion of government activity following the election of the first Labour government in 1935, and then again more rapidly by World War II (see A new broom and war: 1935-1949).  The Public Service went from 0.7% of the population in 1935 to 1.8% in 1944, before dropping back to 1.5% by 1947.  
• The decades following World War II , when the Public Service workforce continued to grow but at a slower rate. The drop in 1973 is due to the transfer of public hospital staff to district health boards. The Public Service workforce as a proportion of the population peaked in 1986-87 at 2.2%. 
• The steep drop that occurs from the late 1980s into the 1990s, when a series of reforms dramatically reshaped the state sector workforce (see New Zealand's State Sector Reform: A Decade of Change). Large departments, such as the Ministry of Works and Development and the Ministry of Energy, were broken up and transformed into State-Owned Enterprises, with their policy and regulatory functions transferred to a much smaller Public Service. A trend towards a smaller core state sector continued into the 1990s, effected through corporatisation and continued restructuring. Despite the reduction in the size of the core Public Service over this period, numbers employed in other areas such as Crown entities and education rose, supporting the picture of “an evolving, although not necessarily shrinking, role for the state” (SSC, 1999). 
• Major reform of the Public Service slowed down from the mid-1990s onwards. Since then, the Public Service workforce has oscillated around 1% of the population, changing as the scope of services provided changed. Public Service full-time equivalent (FTE) employees were 1.0% of the population in 1993, decreasing to a low of 0.8% in 2000, before increasing back-up to 1.2% in recent years. 

Long-term viz data(XLSX, 14 KB)

Female representation in the in the Public Service, 1949 onwards

The following chart shows how female representation in the Public Service workforce has grown over time. While this chart shows data from 1949 onwards, women have served in the Public Service since the 1800s. In the first half of the 20th century, barriers to women’s representation included the requirement to resign upon marriage, lower maximum salaries, and periods of exclusion from permanent roles (see The Public Service Act 1912 and Robertson 1912-1920). 

In 1949, women made up less than 30% of the Public Service workforce, a level that didn’t change markedly until the mid-1970s; they now make up over 60%. Some key time periods and events are: 

• World War II and the following decades of full employment, which saw a changed approach to the employment of women. In 1947, the ‘marriage bar’ was lifted and the clerical division was re-opened to women. However, the Public Service workforce remained stratified, and the Commission set different levels of salary progression for men and women. 
• The equal pay campaign and the Jean Parker case, which led to the Government Service Equal Pay Act 1960 (see Struggles for equality: 1949-1963). The Act eliminated gender-based pay scales in the Public Service. Measures introduced in the 1970s included flexible working hours, encouraging women to enter male-dominated occupations, and the extension of maternity leave (see A tightening of belts: 1972-1984). 
• The reform period of late 1980s to the early 1990s, which saw the steepest rise in the share of women in the Public Service workforce. Contributing to this was the corporatisation of departments such as the Ministry of Works and Development, Forest Service, and Ministry of Energy into State-Owned Enterprises, which moved their male-dominated workforces outside of the Public Service. 

Female representation continues to grow, although at a slower rate. Representation also continues to be higher in the Public Service than in the overall New Zealand labour market (see Gender representation in the Public Service). According to 2024 workforce data, women make up 61.9% of the Public Service workforce, while 37.2% are men.  

The remaining 0.9% constitutes those for whom gender is unknown or who identify as another gender. Information from the Te Taunaki Public Service Census indicated that those of another gender or multiple genders made up 0.5% of the Public Service workforce in 2021. 

The type of work in the Public Service may partly explain women’s high representation, as many Public Service occupations such as social workers, case workers and clerical and administration workers also have a high representation of women in the wider labour market. Women’s representation in the New Zealand Public Service workforce also reflects international trends. On average in OECD countries, women make up a larger share of public sector employees (58.9% in 2020) than of total employment (OECD, 2023). Reasons for this may include the employment conditions on offer in public sector employment, such as flexible work and diverse career paths, and progressive gender equality policies (OECD, 2015). 

Long-term viz data(XLSX, 14 KB)