Workforce Overview
Federal, State and Territory, and Local Governments are responsible for providing public services and shaping Australian society.
The government landscape in Australia is made up of local governments, state and territory governments, and a federal government.
Each level of government has specific functions and is responsible for delivering different services.
There are 1,211 Government agencies across Australia, the number of public sector agencies varies across each State and Territory in Australia. Within the Government agencies, the top employing occupation is administration, with 274,900 employed across Australia.
Public sector work involves delivering frontline services to the community, including occupations such as education aides, early childhood educators and other allied health professionals. Many of these occupations are supported by other industry JSCs. A much smaller proportion of the State and Territory public sector play a role in working to support the delivery of these frontline services.
These roles relate to administration, communications, project management, human resources, information technology, policy development and implementation.
Workforce Megatrends
In 2024, Public Skills Australia identified nine megatrends impacting across the Public Safety and Government industries. A brief overview of the key findings from 2024 are detailed below
Identified Challenges
Unclear understanding of workforce skills needs across the public sector
Due to diverse workforce planning approaches across the Federal and State/Territory Government workforces, the identification of common and consistent public sector skills needs is an ongoing challenge.
Usage of pathway programs to address critical public sector skills needs
Public sector traineeship and apprenticeship pathways generally provide broad-based public sector skills and do not provide trainees/apprentices a clear occupational pathway into public sector roles.
Strategy
Skill Set Development for Priority Skilling Areas
Identify whether any existing training products can be used for priority skilling needs in Federal, State and Territory Governments. Should no training products exist, training products may be developed to support the priority skilling needs in Federal, State and Territory Governments.
Public Sector Training Package
The PSP Public Sector Training Package (PSP Training Package) provides nationally recognised qualifications and competency standards for employees working in the Federal and State/Territory public sector. The PSP Training Package includes a range of qualifications from Certificate II to Advanced Diploma levels, covering a wide variety of public sector roles.
As a Jobs and Skills Council, Public Skills Australia plays an important role in maintaining this training package.
Click here to learn more about the PSP Public Sector Training Package.
Members of Public Skills Australia from this industry-sector
Existing Industry Strategies
Government Initiatives
References
PSP training package enrolment reference: National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), Total VET students and courses 2022: DataBuilder [data set], 2023, ncver.edu.au, accessed 15 January 2024.
Disclaimer
This data have been collected through consultation with industry-sector representatives as part of the Workforce Plan 2025: Federal, State and Territory Governments. These figures represent a snapshot in time and are subject to change. Public Skills Australia Limited has made every effort to ensure that the information and data contained in this report are accurate, up to date and have been sourced appropriately. Our organisation will update these figures annually as part of its Workforce Planning function.