Public Servant Lifestyle

A new CIPD (Charted Institute Of Personnel & Development) study of pay and employment trends since the late 1990s finds that overall job prospects and relative pay conditions of public sector workers have improved considerably.

The study shows that public sector employees have enjoyed larger average salary increases than their private sector counterparts for the past four consecutive years – opening up a 17% pay gap in favour of the public sector - while holding on to a better pension deal.

John Philpott, CIPD Chief Economist, said: “The perception that public sector workers and poorly paid and deserve special attention perhaps needs some revision in the light of these findings. If one compares the median worker in both the private and public sectors for instance, the public sector worker is better off by £12 a week.

“It is only among the top 25% of earners where the private sector outperforms their public sector – a case of the fat cats enabling the private sector to be top dog.”

Latest Office Of National Statistics (ONS) figures show that around 72,000 people were added to the public sector payroll, in the year to this spring.

In total, more than 650,000 new public sector jobs have been created since the late 1990s. And, since 2001, the public sector has been by far the main driver of employment growth in the UK.

The rise in public sector jobs comes despite the government’s drive to improve public sector efficiency, which is serving to reallocate jobs from back office to front line delivery rather than cutting overall job numbers.

'Intermediate Staff'

The CIPD estimates that front-line professionals account for around one in four of the net new public sector jobs created between 1998 and 2004. A similar proportion are back office managers and administrators, with the remaining 50% best described as ‘intermediate staff’, such as teaching assistants, nursing auxiliaries and care support workers.

The public sector jobs boom has been accompanied by higher pay for public employees. For decades, the pay of public sector workers has followed a clear cyclical pattern – periods when public sector pay has fallen behind the private sector followed by periods of catch-up usually spurred by recruitment and retention pressures. Recent years have not only been a classic catch-up period, but public sector workers are now doing relatively well in the pay stakes.

In 2004, there was a median weekly pay gap of 3.5% between the public and private sectors – and recent movements in average earnings suggest that they gap is getting wider. The median hourly pay gap in favour of the public sector is wider still (17%) due to shorter average hours worked in the public sector.

The lowest paid public service workers are not in fact public employees at all, but those working for private sector contractors. While the common perception of public service workers being low paid is generally correct, the suggestion that these are typically public sector employees can therefore be misleading.

Satisfaction

This may explain in part why CIPD employee attitude surveys indicate that job satisfaction in the public sector – which plummeted relative to the private sector in the 1990s – is on the rise. It may also provide some justification for government to take a tougher stance on public sector pay awards and pension provisions, which are also more generous in the public sector.

In present circumstances, with pay and job prospects relatively weak in the private sector, this is unlikely to increase recruitment and retention problems for public employers – which, according to CIPD absence survey data, anyway probably owe more to non-monetary factors such as mounting stress levels amongst public sector employees which underpins a relatively high rate of absence.

The CIPD comparison does not offer support to critics who deride the public sector as being over-manned, overpaid and unproductive. More public sector jobs and higher pay have been needed to improve public service provision.

Ongoing improvements by the ONS to the measurement of public service outputs – notably the ‘triangulation’ procedure recommended by the Atkinson Review, earlier this year – should soon start to demonstrate that progress in being made to public sector productivity. However, the subjective element involved in triangulation is likely to leave ample scope for continued disputes over how productive the public sector is.”

The ONS figures show that public sector employment increased by 72,000 in the twelve months to quarter 1 2005, to stand at 5.824 million. This compares with an increase of 148,000 in the twelve months to quarter 1 2004. Public sector employment has increased by 546,000, since quarter 1, 2000.

Employment in central government increased, by 35,000, in the twelve months to quarter 1, 2005. In local government it increased by 41,000 and in public corporations it fell by 4,000.

The number of employees in the Civil Service fell, by 9,000, in the same period.

The largest increases in the twelve months to quarter to 2005 were in health and social services (up by 50,000) and education (up by 23,000). There were also increases in public administration (up by 9,000) and the police service (including civilians) (up by 7,000).

Employment in the private sector increased by 130,000 (0.6%) in the twelve months to quarter 1, 2005, compared with the rise of 72,000 (1.3%) in the public sector.

The findings result from the work of a cross-departmental project, led by ONS, to improve the quality and timeliness of public sector employment statistics. This is the first time that the results of the new Quarterly Public Sector Employees Survey (QPSES) have been published as part of the quarterly public sector employment estimates.

Estimates of public sector employment for quarter 4, 2004 and quarter 1, 2005 are based partly on projections for some sources. As part of the development programme to improve the quality of public sector employment estimates, government departments are working towards the production of timely quarterly estimates. Until this development programme is completed, there remains a requirement to include estimates for certain sources.

More information available in Job Centre