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 agencies and the other for tertiary education institutions [1]. These figures are collected separately from other Workforce Data reported by Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service 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 [2]. In the year to 30 June 2023, 25,090 staff in the Public Service and selected agencies earned over $100,000, an increase of 5,456 FTEs or 27.8%.  Over half of this increase (53%) was in those who earned between $100,000 and $140,000.

The number of employees in the tertiary education institutions group earning over $100,000 increased in the academic year to 31 December 2022 by 1,141 or 12.7%.

[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. Data also covers 12 tertiary education institutions in 2022.

[2] 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 $200,000 in 2023.

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 5.1% to $10,449 million in the 2023 June year, while the total Crown personnel expenditure increased by 10.4% to $36,052 million as shown in the table below.

Personnel expenditure in Core Crown and Total Crown, June year 2018-2023

 

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

Core Crown* personnel expenditure ($m)

$7,249

$7,794

$8,480

$9,358

$9,945

$10,449

Annual change (%)

5.2%

7.5%

8.8%

10.4%

6.3%

5.1%

Total Crown** personnel expenditure ($m)

$23,690

$25,933

$27,775

$29,817

$32,648

$36,052

Annual change (%)

4.8%

9.5%

7.1%

7.4%

9.5%

10.4%

*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

Expenditure on base salaries is the single 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 2023 increased by 11.8% ($648million) to $6,142 million. The latest increase was produced by a rise in average salary (7.0%) coupled with an increase in FTE staff numbers (4.5%).

Total Salary Cost by Dpt(XLSX, 12 KB)

Total Salary Cost(XLSX, 10 KB)

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 $1,256.3 million in the year to 30 June 2023, as shown on the second tab in the chart above. The second largest cost was for Information Professionals at $990.1 million, followed by $934.9 million for Social, Health and Education Workers and then Inspectors and Regulatory Officers at $842.5 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 Information Professionals: up $159.7 million or 19.2%%. The largest proportional increase was in ICT Professionals and Technicians, up $44.6 million or 20.2%.

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 2023, 0.2% or 126 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, maintaining the low proportion of people in the Public Service receiving performance payments (0.2%).

One of the Government Expectations for employment relations in the public sector is that employers work towards removing at-risk pay and performance bonuses from pay policies and employment agreements. This directive is now being shown in our reporting.

PerfPay, Super, Redun(XLSX, 12 KB)

Redundancy by agency(XLSX, 11 KB)

The chart on the second tab above shows recent trends of Public Service participation in superannuation schemes. As at 30 June 2023, 94% of Public Service employees were members of at least one employer-subsidised superannuation scheme (up from 92.3% last year). Most staff (86.6%) belonged to KiwiSaver, with 7.4% 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 2023, 180 employees in the Public Service were made redundant (down from 319 in 2022). The average redundancy payment was $70,200 (down from $96,800 in 2022).

The total cost of redundancy decreased to $12.6 million (from $30.9 million in 2022), the lowest figure since 2019. Twenty departments reported redundancies.