Who works where in the UK public sector: the statistics
The UK public sector employs just over a sixth of working people – 5.44 million people compared to the private sector’s 26.42 million. Generally, public sector employment has been falling in recent years, due to cuts to central and local government, with only a few exceptions in health and education.
Public sector employment was boosted at the time of 2008 financial crash, then peaked in September 2009 – partly due to English housing associations, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland moving to the public sector. Since then, however, public sector employment has fallen by 15.5%, equating to the loss of nearly 1 million public sector jobs. And since June 2012, there have been fewer public sector employees than there were in 2008; this number continues to drop year on year.
Nearly all public sector jobs are split into two categories: local government and central government. Local government employment, which has been falling since 2010, currently stands at 2.18 million, while central government accounts for 2.95 million public sector jobs.
The NHS employs 1.59 million people, accounting for 29% of all public sector employment, meaning staffing is at its highest level since comparable records began, in 1999. In the UK police service, where numbers have been steadily decreasing since 2009 due to budget cuts, 245,000 people are employed. The civil service has also been shrinking steadily since 2005: it has 416,000 people on its books.
The number of people in public sector employment varies across the UK: in Northern Ireland, almost a quarter (24.8%) of people are public servants; 21% of Scots and 20.8% of people living in Wales. London has the lowest rate of public sector employment of any English region at 14.5%, while the North East at 20.2% has the highest.
The disparity between sickness rates in the public and private sectors is often used as a political football: public sector employees take an average of 8.5 sick days a year, per employee, 3.3 days more than those in the private sector.
Research suggests several reasons for the disparity: the public sector employs more women with poorer than average health, and incorporates many roles that have higher risk of workplace injury or illness. Minor illnesses top the list of reasons for absence, followed by stress, musculoskeletal injuries and mental ill health, with many employees reporting higher levels of stress in the past few years – unsurprising, given the level of redundancies and internal upheaval.
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