The data we collect gives us information about the occupational profile of the workforce, staff numbers, occupational trends and customer-facing roles.
Occupational profile of workforce
Public Service employees were engaged in a wide range of jobs spread across 242 different occupations in 2024. These can be divided into 10 broad occupational groups as shown in the following chart.
In 2024, the two largest groups are inspectors and regulatory officers and social, health and education workers, accounting for 18.7% and 17.4% respectively of the Public Service workforce. Both groups have grown their share of the workforce compared to 2023, after having previously trending down. This was especially true for inspectors and regulatory officers, whose share had fallen from a 2017 peak of 22.2% (when the operation of Mount Eden Prison returned to the Department of Corrections from a private provider) to 17.8% in 2023, its lowest level since records began in 2007. Public servants working in these occupation groups are primarily delivering services to the public, including occupations such as Prison Officers, and Welfare Workers. Another occupation group which tends to deliver public-facing services, contact centre workers, experienced the largest proportional growth of any occupation group in the year to June 2024, growing 16.9%. Contact centre workers are now 8.5% of the workforce.
The third largest group, information professionals, has 14.5% of all the Public Service workforce. This is slightly down from the high of 14.9% seen in 2023, with the share of this group having increased steadily since records began in 2007. Part of this growth has involved the design and support of digital services. Information professionals encompass various roles, such as data analysts, business and intelligence analysts, service designers, non-policy advisors, librarians, archivists, project managers, statisticians, and governance roles.
Staff numbers by occupation
Between 2023 and 2024, the Public Service workforce (FTEs) increased by 421 or 0.7%.
The largest increases over the past year were in the number of Contact Centre Workers (up 777 FTEs, or 16.9%), and Inspectors and Regulatory Officers (up 645 FTEs, or 5.7%). These increases were driven by additional funding at Inland Revenue and Corrections to meet Government priorities and fill frontline vacancies.
There were also decreases in some occupation groups, which were likely due to agencies responding to the Government’s intentions to make savings from reducing back-office services, while maintaining service delivery. The largest decrease was in the number of Clerical and Administrative workers (down 617 FTEs, or 10.8%). For Policy Analysts (down 328 FTEs, or 8.3%) this is the first time since 2016 that the number of staff has dropped, while for Managers (down 75 FTEs, or 0.9%), this is the first year since 2017 that they have reduced.
Note the change to Information Professionals (down 219 FTEs, 2.3%) was driven more by changes in how agencies code their roles to occupation groups, rather than real world changes.
Public Service occupational trends
The following table shows how occupation groups by Public Service department have changed over the last 5 years.
Customer-facing roles
In 2021, just over 40% of public servants who responded to the Te Taunaki Public Service Census had 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.
Communications staff
The Workforce Data collection, which is based off administrative payroll data, can’t measure smaller workforces such as communications staff with great precision. Communications employees are instead included in the ‘other professionals not included elsewhere’ occupation group in Workforce Data reporting. To get accurate communications workforce figures, we run a separate data collection from agencies. This uses a communications workforce definition from 2022 guidance developed by Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission.
Guidance: Communications function definition - Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission
Using this definition, there were 513.5 full-time equivalent (FTE) Communications staff across Public Service departments and departmental agencies at 30 September 2023. This is up marginally (3.5 FTEs or 0.7%) from 510 FTEs in March 2023. Communications staff are around 0.8% percent of the total workforce, a proportion that has decreased slightly since first being measured in this way in June 2022.