Nov 2009 25

How Many People Work For The Government?17

How many people work for the government? Some disgruntled taxpayers reckon the answer is none.
 
On balance, we think that's a tad harsh. But prompted by a comment on a recent BOM post, we've taken another look at how many are employed by the government.

We start with the official count published by the Office for National Statistics. It says that as of Q2 2009, public sector employment totalled 6.039 million, up from the 5.182 million Labour inherited in 1997 – an increase of 17%* (and see here for some interesting longer-term material).

However, big though it is, that total excludes a number of groups who are not counted as being employed in the public sector, but who depend on the public sector for the vast bulk of their earnings:

  • Higher and further education – for arcane historical reasons, H&FE colleges are defined as being in the private sector, even though most of their funding comes from the taxpayer. When last sighted, they were employing some 530,000 staff.
  • GPs – they are counted as part of the NHS by the Department of Health, but most are excluded from the ONS count because they're technically private contractors. There are currently some 40,000 of them in the UK.
  • Network Rail – as we've blogged before, Network Rail is nationalised in all but name, but under an extraordinarily convoluted definitional fudge it's counted as part of the private sector. It currently employs 33,000.
Adding these groups back in takes the public sector employment total up to about 6.7 million.

And then of course, there are all the people whose jobs have been privatised over the years, but who still work pretty well exclusively for the public sector – ie hospital cleaners, dustmen, IT staff, etc etc. How many? We have no idea, but our guess is at least another quarter million, taking our public sector employment total up to around 7 million.

So, of the 28.9 million people currently in employment (see here), around one-quarter of them are employed by the government (aka the taxpayer).

And of course, there's another huge group of people who while not employed by the government, are still dependent on taxpayers for their incomes.

To start with, there are now 5.8 million people of working age who are entirely dependent on welfare (see here), including 1.4m on Job Seeker's Allowance, 2.6m on incapacity benefits, and 0.7m on lone parent benefits. Actually those figures relate to May, and with increased unemployment, the overall total is now probably 6 million.

Adding them in as well, gives us an overall total of 13 million people dependent on taxpayers for their incomes.

And remember, these are people of working age. If we add in the 12.5 million older people now drawing state pensions, we get to a grand total of 25.5 million – 25.5 million people who are dependent on the taxpayer for most or all of their incomes.

Which is somewhat alarming.

Because on our calculation, we've only got 22 million people who are generating income from sources other than the taxpayer (ie 28.9m in employment less the 7m employed by the public sector). Looked at like that, each one of them has to earn the income to support him/herself plus pay the taxes to support another 1.2 adults.

It is not a sustainable burden.

*Footnote – although the ONS public sector employment numbers exclude college lecturers and GPs etc, they do now include the 235,000 staff employed by our nationalised banks – ie RBS, Lloyds, Northern Rock, and Bradford & Bingley.

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  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p0120a6361010970b burn

    Well I never! Thats nearly half the population whose employer, one way or the other, is the current government! I wonder who they’ll all be voting for, come the next election (if we have one).

  • Steve Robson

    because of course, none of those people employed by the government pay any tax themselves do they?
    and its very good of you to think its a tad harsh that some people say “none”. Presumably your thinking of yourself when the Treasury employed you. Perehaps those people who say none, should declare that when the call the fire brigade or an ambulance or look for help from flooding in Cumbria or want NHS care.
    Of course, if half the population are dependent on government spending and you only represent the others, your constituency is much diminished. You can only claim to represent half of taxpayers, those you allege pay the bills. And by the way many of them are also dependent for their income on government spending. They provide vehicles, financial services, building services etc to the public sector. In reality, its all interconnected, the public sector buys from the private sector, public sector workers PAY TAX TOO and SPEND in the private sector, the public sector provides infrastructure for the private sector. Only in your voodoo economics is the private sector superior and the ONLY bit that produces wealth. If we listen to you, we really will be ruined.

  • Dominique

    There is absolutely no reason for this. And Steve – I would gladly pay for private healthcare and private flood coverage if I didn’t get taxed at 50% to support all of these public sector jobs and pensions.

  • Marc

    Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, and government employees don’t vote for a smaller state.

  • Adam Wissen

    You forgot all the people employed by our state owned banks Mike, tut tut.
    Dominique lord forbid you should have to pay into a pot which benefits the whole of the society you live in, rather than just looking after yourself.
    Marc – If only that were true! Plenty of these ghastly Public Sector workers you lot bang on about, will be voting Tory come the next election. In places like Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Stamford, Grantham. Most of them because they always have done no doubt.

  • Steve Robson

    Well Dominique will have to pay for a whole raft of other things too – private roads, private fire protection, private policing, private defence and so forth. We could make all education private too and be the only advanced industrialised nation without primary and secondary state education provision.
    well worth it to reduce Dominique’s tax bill!
    Not sure about the private flood insurance though. How are we going to construct flood defences to protect those who contribute and just allow her house to flood?
    …and of course, she quotes the old TPA line (sorry about the superfluous n) that all this tax pays for public sector jobs and pensions, when in fact nearly half goes in transfer payments for benefits, including universal pensions. She may prefer to live in a society without those benefits too, but we disagree on that and until the TPA run as a political party, so too do all our political parties, even the mean old Tories, so losing the half of your tax that pays for that is pretty unlikely Dominique.
    All in all, you’ll probably just save the cost of a few equalities advisors and Comms staff, which will probably knock about 0.0000001% off your tax bill if your lucky. Meanwhile the rest of us will at least continue to live in a civilised society.

  • JD

    How about outsourcing firms such as Capita ?
    They rely 100% on public sector financing

  • Andy

    I don’t know which failing public service organisation Steve works for but he sounds typical of the sort I would like to see ousted in a major shake up. Yes we need public services but we don’t need the armies of managers, statisticians, advisors etc who have bloated the system and quite honestly made things worse. That’s the thing that this government can’t seem to understand. You can’t just throw more money and manpower at a problem and walk away. And please don’t insult our intelligence by telling us how well the NHS, schools and the Police are doing now that their funding has doubled, we don’t need the statistics, we can see for ourselves.

  • paul stevens

    So out of 6 million public sector workers, 806 earn more than 150k? So what – there are more that 806 workers earning 150k plus in a single merchant bank. And anyway how else will you get half-decent people running large, complex public services?

  • gildedtumbril

    I believe we could reasonably dispense with at least 90% of government ‘employees’ and never notice the difference. As for the astronomical number of top pay arsewipes, well, it beggars belief. Or should that be buggers belief?
    I would like the TPA to do an expose on how much of the state pittance, dribbled out weekly to pensioners is raked straight back in taxes. There’s 5% on gas & electricity for a start.

  • Steve Robson

    I’ve only ever succeeded sorry Andy; you presumably are a bitter private sector failure.
    gildedtumbril – what a fool! You’ve just wiped out most of the army, teachers, doctors and nurses – because they account for about half the staff. I think we could rather more easily do without double glazing salesmen and management consultants thanks.

  • Andy

    Steve is probably one of those new initiative, “non-job” employees paid to spew government propaganda telling us how well we are all doing. Who else could be so blind?

  • Steve Robson

    Andy is probably an outcome of the care in the community policy.
    and lots of people must be blind because anyone who can’t see that the NHS and schools are better now than under the Tories must be really stupid. All the polling evidence on INDIVIDUAL services says that. Its only the overall position that gets a negative response and thats because of the real PROPAGANDA machine of people like the TPA and the Daily Mail, backed by the RICH, who want to pay even less tax that they do now. Scrooge is their model citizen and Victorian England their heyday.
    By the way, I don’t work in the public sector. It is actually possible to believe in public services and want a fair society and work in the private sector. We can’t all fall victim to the propaganda of the rich like Andy and do their dirty work for them. Maybe they’ll give you a few crumbs for your services Andy.

  • Adam Wissen

    ‘I believe we could reasonably dispense with at least 90% of government ‘employees’ and never notice the difference.’
    At least 90% Andy, wow. Care to explain how you came to that figure? No, am I right in thinking that you just plucked it out of thin air then?
    If only the country was run by visionaries like you Hardeep Singh and Mike Denham.

  • Nick

    Crikey, this thread’s a little verbose. I’ve worked for the public and private sectors. In the public sector for a science laboratory where the scientists were outnumbered by the HR team 2:1.
    I’ve taught, and am a firm believer in state education, but what I cannot accept is that aside from the National Curriculum that the department for education has any other role. Even the NC could be set by a governing body of head teachers meeting annually.
    Instead the Dept for Ed issues endless edicts that do nothing except ruin learning. Then councils get involved to swipe half the £7500 each child gets. Just give the money straight to head teachers in a voucher system per child. Double the number of schools to chop class sizes, and bug out!
    The sheer waste of the department for education and local councils is staggering. Scrap the lot except 200 people.
    Welfare is given to people directly. Why? Give it to companies to employ and train people, give people jobs and skills instead of money. The whole system is the wrong way around and, as the article states unsustainable.
    There are quangos for flood protection, roads, buildings, heritage AND a department for the environment. Why? It’s all duplication of effort to sustain stupidity and it is a waste of money.
    An easy example – you can no longer call your tax office. You have to call a call centre who pass the information on! Such a waste of resources! Hundreds of people taking records only to pass them on to other people. It’s absolutely bonkers that so much faffing about is done for no benefit to the public.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/swutraho Swut Raho

    If the average salary of a fed worker is $70,000 while the average in private sector is $40.000, then I suggest a “public employment tax”.. Why not? I have to pay to use public golf course’s and boat ramps- so government workers should pay a tax to use public money…Why not!

  • David Hickey

    Just make public services more efficient. I witness on a daily basis how some people who are paid for by the taxpayer are used inefficiently and I find it bloody annoying.