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Download the full State of the sector report
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Workforce profile data
Working for Queensland survey
Conduct and performance data
State of the sector report definitions
Annual earnings (FTE): Annual earnings are calculated on the salary plus regular allowances paid to employees at their actual FTE. Information on earnings is collected as at the snapshot date and is extrapolated over a 12-month period.
ANZSCO (occupation code): ANZSCO (Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations) is an industry standard coding system that attributes a six-digit code to a position to describe the occupation being performed. Refer to abs.gov.au/ANZSCO.
Appointment type: Either permanent, temporary, contract or casual (refer to specific definitions for each term).
Average tenure: Average of count of years since first appointed to public sector divided by total headcount.
BP2 agency: Agencies listed in the Queensland Budget Paper 2.
Brisbane or Brisbane and surrounding: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Area 4 (SA4) of Brisbane Inner City, Brisbane North, South, East and West.
Casual employment: Casual employees are not permanent employees and normally work less than full-time hours as prescribed by the applicable industrial instrument. Casual employment attracts the payment of a loading (as prescribed by the applicable industrial instrument) in lieu of sick and recreation leave. Casual employment is characterised by its ad hoc nature with each engagement standing alone.
Conduct and performance data: Section 128 of the Public Sector Act 2022 sets the legislative requirement for the public reporting of the Queensland Government conduct and performance data.
Contract–s122 and s155: Includes senior executives and chief executives and equivalents contracted under the Public Sector Act 2022 or similar provisions in other relevant Acts. Also, includes employees on common law contracts. Such contracts established under the Public Sector Act 2008, are referred to as s122 contracts. Contracts established under the Public Sector Act 2022, are referred to as s155 contracts.
Corporate services roles: Provide organisation-wide support enabling the public sector to deliver the Queensland Government’s objectives for the community.
Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD): Employees who identify as culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) are, for the purpose of Queensland public sector targets, defined as people who speak another language at home besides English including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language/s. The current target of greater than 12% in the public sector applies.
Discrimination: Occurs when a person, or group of people, is treated less favourably than another person or group because of their background or certain personal characteristics.
Earnings (full-time): Earnings are calculated on the salary and regular allowances paid to employees, typically including SES motor vehicle allowances, locality allowances and higher duties. Shift allowances and penalty rates can be regular allowances but not always. Average annual earnings do not include one-off or sporadic payments such as travelling allowances. Information on earnings is collected as at the quarterly snapshot date and is extrapolated over a 12-month period.
Employment status: Either full-time, part-time or casual (refer to specific definitions for each term).
Fixed term temporary: Temporary employees are employed for fixed term engagements of specific periods of time. The circumstances for engaging temporary employees are many and include specific budget allocation for particular projects, replacing permanent employees who are absent from their substantive position or assistance required to meet peak workloads. Temporary employees are generally employed on the same conditions as permanent employees as prescribed by the applicable industrial instrument. Where temporary appointment type is referred to in this report, it is to be read as fixed term temporary employment.
Key frontline/frontline roles and frontline support roles: Deliver services, programs and outcomes directly to the community, or provide essential support enabling the development and delivery of frontline services, programs and outcomes. Delivery can be via government centres, telephone, online or in-field. Key frontline roles are those that deliver key services and are immediately recognisable to the community, they are a subset of frontline and frontline support roles. These roles are critical or essential in a community and include nurses, doctors, teachers, police, child safety case workers, youth case workers and correctional officers. While people in key frontline and frontline roles engage directly with the community, frontline support roles provide essential support enabling the development and delivery of frontline services, programs and outcomes.
Full-time: An employee who works full-time hours as specified in the award or agreement under which the employee is engaged.
Full-time equivalent (FTE): The ratio of an individual’s working hours to the relevant award full-time standard hours for the work being performed.
Full-time equivalent days absent: The average full-time days absent during a quarter, divided by the prescribed award hours. Excludes casual employees. Data reflects leave taken in the previous quarter, to account for retrospective payroll processing.
- For unscheduled days this includes sick leave, carers leave, industrial disputes, workers compensation and miscellaneous special leave (includes leave such as bereavement or emergent leave hours).
- Sick includes absence due to sick leave.
- Carers includes absence due to carers leave.
Gender pay gap earning: The methodology for calculating gender pay gap in the Queensland public sector is the difference between the average annual earnings for male and female employees, as a proportion of male average annual earnings. Earnings includes base salary and regular allowances. Earnings reflect employees’ full-time earnings (regardless of whether the employee works part-time).
Gender pay gap (salary): The methodology for calculating gender pay gap in the Queensland public sector is the difference between the average annual salary for male and female employees, as a proportion of male average annualised salary. This reflects employees’ full-time salary (regardless of whether the employee works part-time).
Headcount: A count of people or the number of people who were employed and paid at the time of the snapshot.
Hire rate: Hire rate measures the percentage of employees who were hired into the workforce during the reporting period. This is a percentage, representing permanent employees who are hired into the Queensland public sector as a proportion of the total number of permanent employees in the Queensland public sector. This figure represents the underlying data for the preceding year (prior four quarters). For example, March 2024 includes data from July 2023, September 2023, December 2023 and March 2024.
Leadership Board: Consists of the chief executives of all government departments as well as the Public Sector Commissioner.
Location: This is based on the location of where an employee works – that is the locations of the primary Queensland Government provided workplace. Statistical Area Level 4 as defined in the Australian Statistical Geography Standard by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Machinery of Government changes (MoG): Re-organisation of functions across public sector departments in response to portfolio changes or changes in government objectives initiated by the government of the day.
Minimum obligatory human resource information (MOHRI): Queensland Government agencies provide MOHRI data to the Public Sector Commission on a quarterly basis. MOHRI was first introduced in 1995 to enhance employee data collection for human resource planning purposes. Data is collected and collated from payroll systems across the Queensland public sector. In previous years, the Queensland Government workforce statistics were published twice a year in March or September biannual workforce profile. This data was presented in a report format as well as raw figures available on the open data portal. Any dataset that was previously presented in the profile, but is not included in the State of the sector report can be accessed via the open data portal. There are processes in place to continually review and improve data quality for reporting. This is resulting in minor adjustments to some very few figures that are published in prior profile reports.
Part-time: An employee who works less than full-time hours and performs those duties on a regular basis.
Permanent employment: An employee who is employed on a continuing basis to perform ongoing functions.
Racism: Refers to prejudice, discrimination or hatred directed at someone because of their colour, ethnicity or national origin.
Regions or rest of state: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Area 4 (SA4) of Cairns, Central Queensland, Darling Downs–Maranoa, Gold Coast, Ipswich, Logan–Beaudesert, Mackay–Isaac–Whitsunday, Moreton Bay North and South, Queensland–Outback, Sunshine Coast, Toowoomba, Townsville and Wide Bay.
Separation rate: Separation rate measures the percentage of employees who left the workforce during the reporting period. This represents permanent employees who separate (i.e. exit) from the Queensland public sector as a proportion of the total number of permanent employees in the Queensland public sector. This figure represents the underlying data for the preceding year (prior four quarters). For example, March 2024 includes data from July 2023, September 2023, December 2023 and March 2024.
Sexual harassment: It refers to an unwelcome sexual advance, unwelcome request for sexual favours or other unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature which makes a person feel offended, humiliated or intimidated, and where that reaction is reasonable in the circumstances. Sexual harassment does not need to be deliberate or repeated to be illegal. It can be experienced in the course of employment (i.e. person-to-person conduct) or through the workplace context (i.e. sexualised workplace environment).
Wellbeing: Refers to a sense of wellness across physical, psychological, social, financial and work domains.
Women in leadership: Employees identify as female/woman in leadership positions classified as SO, SES2, SES3, SES4 and CEO levels (s122 and s155 SO, SES and CEO roles).
Working for Queensland (WfQ): An annual survey which enables employees from a wide range of Queensland public sector to be heard, by providing insights into their employment experiences. Gaining these insights play a key role in creating a better workplace, delivering on the government’s priorities, and informing future workforce planning across the sector. In 2023, 69,090 people across sixty-eight agencies in the Queensland public sector participated in the survey. This equated to 33% response rate. The survey was conducted from 21 August to 17 September 2023. In 2022, 85,853 people across sixty-eight agencies in the Queensland public sector participated in the survey. This equated to 43% response rate. The survey was conducted from 5 September to 5 October 2022. Throughout this report, Working for Queensland numbers are rounded to the nearest whole number. As a result, some figures may not add to 100%.
Workplace bullying: Repeated and unreasonable behaviour by a person or group of people directed towards a worker or group of workers, that this behaviour occurs more than once and that the behaviour creates a risk to health and safety.
Previous State of the sector reports
Video transcripts
On behalf of the Queensland Public Sector Commission, I am pleased to share with you the State of the sector report for 2024.
This new format for transparent employment reporting provides comprehensive data, analysis and insights about Queensland’s largest workforce – the Queensland public sector.
With a workforce of over 308,000 strong, these dedicated public servants go to work each day committed to making a difference to the lives of Queenslanders.
Working across the state in frontline, frontline support and corporate roles – our people are here for you, working for Queenslanders every day.
From the midwife delivering our newest Queenslander, to the behind-the-scenes hospital support staff who provide fresh linen, manage the IT systems, pay our workers and communicate important health messages.
They are the transport workers issuing your licence – and those planning and managing major infrastructure projects.
They are our educators, our policy makers, our police, and our child safety workers.
And these are only just some of the roles and services that make such a difference to Queenslander’s lives. The release of the State of the sector report in this new format gives greater transparency to who makes up our public sector, what they do, where they work and how they feel about working in the sector.
It also gives the public access to more data, more detailed explanations, and more insight than ever before about our workforce and our performance.
The report analyses workforce statistics, employee opinion survey results and conduct and performance data –linking our operating environment with insight about our people, diversity, work environment, performance and future.
Publishing the 2024 State of the sector report is a key milestone in the Even better public sector for Queensland strategy – which was launched in March 2024.
While this is a big step forward for transparent employment reporting, it is just the beginning.
The State of the Sector Report will be published annually and each year we will learn from the last, by listening to the feedback – helping us to continually deliver an Even Better public sector for Queensland.
I invite you to explore the report to learn more about the great workforce that serves our communities.
My name is Dr Linda Colley, and I am Queensland’s Special Commissioner for Equity and Diversity.
Since 2021, we have made some substantial changes to the equity and diversity sphere in the Queensland public sector. And I am delighted to share some of the changes we have made.
Many of these changes were embedded in the new Public Sector Act introduced last year to provide a great platform for change.
The Act introduced a new approach to recruitment and selection.
Recruitment is the only way to bring new people into the sector, and it was important that the provisions supported a balance between merit and equity.
A hiring manager’s first consideration is that the candidate must be able to do the job, but they can also consider other factors that might indicate additional merit – these include past performance, future contribution to the agency, and the extent to which the appointment would support the agency’s equity and diversity goals.
This will improve progress towards our diversity targets.
We also introduced two new duties for sector chief executives to actively progress equity and diversity and to promote a culture of respect and inclusion in their agency’s workplaces.
To support them to meet these obligations we created an equity and diversity audit process, that assists agencies to take a deep dive into their workforce data to identify progress and potential areas of concern.
We have also been working directly with agencies to better understand and reduce the gender pay gap. This is essential for a sector that has nearly 70% women in its workforce.
It is great to watch the downward trend in the sector’s gender pay gap, with a drop of over 25% to 6.3% in the two years to June 2023. This is also substantially lower than the 13% gender pay gap for the Australian labour market.
Our women in leadership initiative includes a range of strategies that focus agencies on the under-representation of women at executive levels in the sector. The State of the sector report highlights some of our research to understand this under-representation, and the progress being made, as we move towards the target of women holding 50% of roles at every executive level.
I am proud of the progress the sector has made, through these and numerous other strategies. But there is always more work to be done. Over the next 12 months, we will be focused on embedding the new recruitment processes across the sector, and continuing to assist agencies to make progress towards the sector’s diversity targets … and continue reducing that gender pay gap.
Since 2021, the Office of the Special Commissioner, Equity and Diversity have made some substantial changes to the equity and diversity sphere in the Queensland public sector. I am delighted to share some of the changes and progress we have made.
Many of these changes were embedded in the Public Sector Act 2022, (the Act) and provide a great platform for change.
The Act introduced a new approach to recruitment and selection for the Queensland public sector. Recruitment is the only way to bring new people into the sector, and it was important that the provisions supported a balance between merit and equity.
A hiring manager’s first consideration is that the candidate must be able to do the job, but they can also consider other factors that might indicate additional merit – these include past performance, future contribution to the agency, and the extent to which the appointment would support the agency’s equity and diversity goals. This will improve progress towards our diversity targets.
My Office also introduced two new duties for sector chief executives to actively progress equity and diversity and to promote a culture of respect and inclusion in their agency’s workplaces. To support them to meet these obligations we created an equity and diversity audit process, that assists agencies to take a deep dive into their workforce data to identify progress and potential areas of concern.
We have been working directly with agencies to better understand and reduce the gender pay gap. This is essential for a sector that has nearly 70% women in its workforce. It has been great to watch the downward trend in the sector’s gender pay gap, with a drop of over 25% to 6.3% in the two years to June 2023. This is also substantially lower than the 13% gender pay gap for the Australian labour market.
Our women in leadership initiative includes a range of strategies that focus agencies on the under-representation of women at executive levels in the sector. The State of the sector report 2024 highlights some of our research to understand this under-representation, and the progress being made, as we move towards the target of women holding 50% of roles at every executive level.
I am proud of the progress the sector has made, through these and numerous other strategies. But there is always more work to be done. Over the next 12 months, my team and I will be focused on embedding the new recruitment processes across the sector and continuing to assist agencies to make progress towards the sector’s diversity targets, whilst we work towards reducing the gender pay gap even further.