Diversity

Note: ‘pp’ stands for percentage points.

Diversity data in the Workforce Profile is subject to several factors, including public sector employees self-identifying their diversity characteristics when their agency collects this data. This is facilitated by a culture of inclusion within agencies, and employees being encouraged to update their data. 

Higher response rates increase the accuracy of the diversity data. The public sector’s diversity response rate was 78.3% in 2022, a 0.2pp increase from 78.1% in 2021. Most clusters experienced an increase in the response rate, reflecting efforts to improve visibility of their workforce diversity (see Figure 5.1). Machinery of government (MOG) changes produced a decrease in Premier and Cabinet's historically very high response rate, as divisions with higher response rates moved to Enterprise, Investment and Trade. 

Premier’s Priority – percentage of people with disability (estimate)¹

Increasing the proportion of employees with disability in the NSW public sector is a Premier’s Priority target for a world class public service.² The priority aims to increase the representation of people with disability in the NSW public sector to 5.6% by 2025. Despite the increased diversity response rate this year, the proportion of employees with disability remained the same as last year (2.5%). In comparison, 5.5% of respondents to the People Matter Employee Survey identified as having disability, which is 0.9% higher than in 2021 (noting that this is an anonymous survey and uses a different definition of disability).³

Figure 5.2 shows that the representation of NSW public sector employees with disability remained the same in 2022 compared to 2021. This continues to follow a longer-term trend of decreasing representation of people with disability in the NSW public sector workforce. 

There was again little change in representation across NSW government sector services in 2022 compared to 2021 (see Table 5.1). The Public Service continues to have the highest proportion of people with disability, at an estimated 4.2%, noting a 0.2pp increase compared to 2021. 

Table 5.1: Representation of people with disability by service (estimate), 2021 to 2022⁵

There continues to be a notable difference in the pattern of commencements and separations of employees with disability compared to those without disability. There is a higher rate of separation and a lower rate of commencement for people with disability than for people without disability (see Figure 5.3).

In 2022, the rate of people with disability commencing in public sector agencies was 0.7pp lower than for people without disability. At the same time, the rate of people with disability separating from public sector agencies was 2.0pp higher than for people without disability. The gap in commencement rate widened, while the gap in the separation rate narrowed, compared to 2021. This occurred during a period when there was an increase in separations across the sector. 

Improving the representation of people with disability requires higher rates of commencement and lower rates of separation for people with disability compared to people without disability. There is an additional challenge in retaining people with disability in the sector due to the age profile of this group.

The representation of people with disability in the sector markedly increases with age (see Figure 5.4). For employees with disability, 35.7% are aged 55 and above, compared to only 22.3% of those without disability in the same age range. In contrast, the representation of people without disability is 8.2pp higher than those with disability in the 25 to 34 age range.

The age profile of the sector’s employees with disability means they will continue to exit the sector at higher rates than employees without disability. The median tenure for people without disability was 7.4 years in 2022 and 10.4 years for those with disability. Tenure was longer for those with disability requiring an adjustment at work, with a median tenure of 14.0 years compared to 9.1 years for those not requiring an adjustment.

Looking at the reasons for separation for people with and without disability in 2022, a higher proportion of the comparatively older cohort of employees with disability retired (+6.6pp), or accepted voluntary redundancy (+2.0pp) or medical retirement (+1.8pp) than employees without disability. In contrast, the rate of employees without disability transferring to another public sector agency was 3.0pp higher than for employees with disability. This may be due to the younger cohort, and possibly the ease of transferring compared to employees with disability, who may have to consider workplace adjustments or commuting restrictions.⁷

The representation of employees who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people has progressively increased over the past decade. In 2022, the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples increased by 0.1pp to an estimated 3.8% of non-casual employees in the NSW public sector. 

From 2014 to 2022, the estimated proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees increased by 0.6pp or more in all salary bands below the level of Senior Executive (see Figure 5.7). The highest increase was in the Grade 1/2 range, which has seen a total increase of 1.7pp since 2014. 

In 2021, the sector achieved the Premier’s Priority of having 114 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in senior leadership roles by 2025, with 130 senior leaders in the NSW government sector. In 2022, that number continued to increase with an additional 24 senior leaders, totalling 154 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in senior leadership roles. This marked an 18.5% increase from 2021. Since 2014, the largest increases occurred in the Public Service (+40) and the Teaching Service (+28), accounting for 70.1% of the total increase. 

The proportion of employees in the sector who first spoke a language other than English (LOTE) has decreased to 2020 estimated levels of 18.1% of the total non-casual workforce, down from 18.5% in 2021. While the Public Service saw an increase of 1.0% (+1,508), the NSW Health Service (-1.1%, -907) and the Transport Service (-7.5%, -877) saw declines that affected the sector representation. Nearly half (43.8%) of all employees in this diversity group also identified as being from a racial, ethnic or ethno-religious minority group. 

In 2022, there was a 0.8pp increase in the proportion of employees in the sector who identified as being from a racial, ethnic or ethno-religious minority group. Reaching an estimated 13.9%, this is the highest estimate in the past decade (see Figure 5.8). Most services experienced an increase in representation of employees from this group in 2022, with the largest growth in the Public Service, up 4.7pp to 21.3%. The only services to decrease were the NSW Health Service and the external to government sector, down by 1.0pp and 1.5pp, respectively. 

Figure 5.9 shows the employee distribution across salary bands, comparing employees in the LOTE diversity group to the non-LOTE group. The largest difference between groups was in the lower and middle salary ranges. There was a higher percentage of employees from the LOTE diversity group in the salary ranges General Scale (+2.2pp) and Grade 5/6 (+4.8pp), and lower percentage in Grade 1/2 (-2.6pp) and Grade 7/8 (-3.7pp). 

Figure 5.10 shows the employee distribution across salary bands, comparing employees who identified as being from a racial, ethnic or ethno-religious minority group with those who did not identify as being from a minority group. There is a higher percentage of employees who identify as being from a minority group in the middle and upper salary ranges and a lower percentage in the bottom 2 salary ranges. In 2022, 49.1% of employees in the sector who identified as being from a racial, ethnic or ethno-religious minority group were in salary bands Grade 7/8 and above (see Figure 5.10). In comparison, 42.5% of employees who did not identify as being from a minority group were in these salary bands (6.6% fewer). 

¹ See the Glossary for the diversity estimation method used.

² NSW Government, Premier’s Priorities, World class public service.

³ The People Matter Employee Survey uses a different, social model of disability as its definition, and the population is a sample rather than a census.  

⁴ Ibid, 1.

⁵ Ibid, 1.

⁶ The percentage point gap is calculated by subtracting the rate for people without disability from the rate for people with disability.

⁷ Australian Human Rights Commission, The Rights of People with Disabilities: Areas of Need for Increased Protection: Chapter 2: Employment, accessed 26 October 2022; Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2019, People with disability in Australia, accessed 26 October 2022.

⁸ Where the difference between people with and without disability was greater than 1.0pp and the group size was greater than 10.

⁹ Ibid, 1.