The data we collect provides information about employees who earned over $100,000, personal expenditure in Crown agencies, Public Service salary cost and performance pay.
Employees who earned over $100,000
The numbers of staff (excluding chief executives) who received $100,000 or more in total remuneration (including base salary plus any superannuation, performance and redundancy payments) are shown in 2 tables below, one for Public Service departments and selected agencies1 and the other for tertiary education institutions.2 These figures are collected separately from other Workforce Data reported by the Commission, where salary is instead defined as full-time equivalent base salary as at 30 June.
As wage inflation increases salaries each year, more employees are moving into the $100,000+ income bracket.3 In the year to 30 June 2024, 31,070 staff in the Public Service and selected agencies earned over $100,000, an increase of 5,980 FTEs or 23.8%. Nearly half of this increase (48%%) was in those who earned between $100,000 and $140,000.
1: Data covers 38 Public Service departments and departmental agencies, as well as 6 selected agencies whose chief executives are under the Remuneration Authority jurisdiction, including The Controller and Auditor-General, Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Office of the Ombudsmen, Parliamentary Service, Parliamentary Counsel Office, and Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.
2: Data covered 12 tertiary education institutions in 2023. This was the last year that the Commission collected data from tertiary education institutions. From August 2023, an amendment to the Education and Training Act came into effect requiring tertiary education institutions to report on the number of employees who received more than $100,000 in remuneration in their annual reports.
3: In 1998, Cabinet agreed that the disclosure of public sector remuneration would follow the Companies Act 1993 requirement, where total remuneration would be disclosed when it was above $100,000 (CAB (98) M8/3B(1)). This value of 100,000 has not been adjusted to account for inflation since 1993. If you did this, using the CPI, we estimate the amount would be around $207,000 in 2024.
Personnel expenditure in Crown agencies
The Treasury publishes year end ‘Financial Statements of the Government of New Zealand’ each October. These statements include personnel expenditure, which covers total remuneration paid to employees. It includes payments such as salaries, employer contributions to superannuation, long service leave entitlements, performance, and severance. Personnel expenses for core government agencies increased by 7.8% to $11,260 million in the 2024 June year, while the total Crown personnel expenditure increased by 8.4% to $39,083 million as shown in the table below.
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Personnel expenditure in Core Crown and Total Crown, June year 2019-2024 |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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|
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
|
|
Core Crown* personnel expenditure ($m)
|
$7,794 |
$8,480 |
$9,358 |
$9,945 |
$10,449 |
$11,260 |
|
|
Annual change (%)
|
7.5% |
8.8% |
10.4% |
6.3% |
5.1% |
7.8% |
|
|
Total Crown** personnel expenditure ($m)
|
$25,933 |
$27,775 |
$29,817 |
$32,648 |
$36,052 |
$39,083 |
|
|
Annual change (%) |
9.5% |
7.1% |
7.4% |
9.5% |
10.4% |
8.4% |
|
*Core Crown — includes ministers, government departments, departmental agencies, interdepartmental executive boards, interdepartmental ventures, the New Zealand Defence Force, the New Zealand Police, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, the Parliamentary Service, the NZS Fund and the Reserve Bank of NZ.
**Total Crown — includes the core Crown plus Crown entities and state-owned enterprises.
Public Service salary cost
The size of the Public Service workforce and expenditure on their base salaries are the largest component of personnel expenditure (others include superannuation, overtime, redundancy costs, and so on). The total salary cost shown in the first tab on the chart below is calculated by multiplying the number of FTE employees in the Public Service by the average annual FTE base salary. These are approximate annual salary costs and don’t represent total personnel expenditure.
The total base salary cost for the Public Service in 2024 increased by 5.3% ($328 million) to $6,470 million. The latest increase was produced by a rise in average salary (4.6%) coupled with a small increase in FTE staff numbers (0.7%).
Total salary cost by occupation group is the product of average base salary and the number of FTE staff in that group. The Manager group had the largest cost at $1,306.9 million in the year to 30 June 2024, as shown on the second tab in the chart above. The second largest cost was for Information Professionals at $1,028.5 million, followed by $1,010.7 million for Social, Health and Education Workers and then Inspectors and Regulatory Officers at $926.4 million. These four groups accounted for just under two-thirds (66%) of Public Service employee salary costs.
By occupation group, the largest increase in absolute salary cost was in Inspectors and Regulatory Officers: up $83.9 million or 10.0%. The largest proportional increase was in Contact Centre Workers up $65.0 million or 22.3%.
Performance pay: Superannuation: Redundancy
Performance pay is defined as a one-off payment to staff in recognition of outstanding performance, excluding one-off payments made in lieu of other remuneration adjustments. In the year to 30 June 2024, 0.01% or 6 Public Service employees received a performance pay with the average value of $3,100 (see the first tab on the chart below). These figures are like previous years, a reflection of the low proportion of people in the Public Service receiving performance payments (0.2%).
The chart on the second tab above shows recent trends of Public Service participation in superannuation schemes. As at 30 June 2024, 94.4% of Public Service employees were members of at least one employer-subsidised superannuation scheme (up from 94.0% last year). Most staff (87.0%) belonged to KiwiSaver, with 6.8% in the State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme (SSRSS). Membership of KiwiSaver has increased steadily as new employees join the Public Service. SSRSS and the Government Superannuation Fund (GSF) schemes were closed to new members in 2008 and 1992 respectively, and the number of employees in those schemes are decreasing gradually as members leave the Public Service.
The chart on the third tab shows that in the year to 30 June 2024, 865 employees in the Public Service were made redundant (up from 180 in 2023). This is the highest number since 2011 when there were 888 redundancies. Twenty seven departments reported redundancies, with MBIE reporting the highest number (246) followed by Social Development (202). Further redundancies have occurred since 1 July, and they do not yet show in our data.
The average redundancy payment was $56,400 (down from $70,200 in 2023). This is the lowest average since 2017 when it was $49,000. The total cost of redundancy increased to $48.8 million (up from $12.6 million in 2023), the highest figure since 2010 when it was $58.4 million.