The State election will be held on Saturday 26 November 2022. During the caretaker period (commencing 6.00 pm on Tuesday 1 November 2022) content will only be added to this website in line with the caretaker conventions.
Pay by gender
Facts, figures and visuals on public sector employee pay and gender
Unless stated otherwise, this workforce data shows you numbers as at June 2022.
This data doesn’t show the machinery of government changes that came into effect on 1 January 2023.
You can use the dropdown menu at the bottom of each chart to filter the data sets.
For some visuals, we give you a breakdown of the data by:
Victorian Public Service (VPS): the 9 departments, Victoria Police (VPS employees) and 46 authorities and offices defined to be Victorian Public Service employers under the Public Administration Act 2004
Public sector industry groups: all other public sector bodies outside the VPS that have a public function, grouped together by industry.
Overall public sector workforce: VPS and public sector industries combined.
The industry groups are:
creative industries, finance, transport and other
government schools
police and emergency services
public health care
TAFE and other education
water and land management.
At the end of this page, find Excel datasets for June 2018 to June 2022.
We use the overall pay gap between women and men as a way to measure workplace gender equality.
We only report the gender pay gap in a binary way (men and women) because the number of employees with self-described gender identity is currently too small to analyse.
We work out the gender pay gap using:
mean pay or average pay gap — the lowest and highest salaries have more influence, which increases the pay gap because of the small number of men earning very high salaries.
median pay or ‘middle’ point of the pay gap — this is less influenced by extreme salaries or outliers and gives us a better idea of the gap for most employees.
This year we’ve included the median and mean pay gap in line with how the Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector (CGEPS) reports gender pay gaps. However, our numbers may be different to the CGEPS because they include other organisations in their analysis. For example, they include school employees such as teachers, administrative and other support staff in their Victorian Public Service analysis.
To work out the median pay gap for the overall public sector workforce we:
Find out what the median full-time equivalent pay is for men ($102,798) and women ($91,598).
Work out the difference between those 2 numbers ($102,798 minus $91,598 equals $11,200).
Express the difference as a percentage of the men’s median salary ($11,200 is 10.9% of men’s median salary of $102,798).
Confirm the median pay gap for the public sector is 10.9%.
Key facts
Overall public sector workforce:
19.2% or $23,347 is the mean (average) pay gap of non-casual public sector employees
10.9% or $11,200 is the median gender pay gap of non-casual public sector employees
Overall, more women are employed in each pay group than men. But a higher percentage of men are in the highest pay group than women
The gender pay gap favours men across most occupations and increases with age.
Victorian Public Service:
6.8% or $7,822 is the mean (average) gender pay gap of non-casual VPS employees
0% is the median gender pay gap of non-casual VPS employees
The gender pay gap is driven by a higher percentage of men in the highest pay group comared to women.
Median and mean salaries
Overall public sector workforce:
median salary: $93,360
men’s median salary: $102,798
women’s median salary: $91,598
median pay gap: 10.9% or $11,200
mean (average) pay gap: 19.2% or $23,347.
Victorian Public Service:
median salary for men and women: $103,463
median pay gap: 0% or $0
median salary is the top of the VPS grade 4 band (inclusive of relevant mobility payment)
mean (average) pay gap: 6.8% or $7,822.
The mean pay gap in the VPS is driven by a higher percentage of men in the highest pay group and a higher percentage of women in the middle pay group.
See chart below on the gender pay gap across pay groups and pay classification.
Gender pay gap based on median annual salary
The median gender pay gap varies by industry group.
In 2022, the median gender pay gap:
rose to 15% from 14% in 2021 for creative industries, finance, transport and other industries. They have the largest gender pay gap in the public sector.
fell to 0% from 2% in the Victorian Public Service
fell to 6% from 8% in public healthcare
fell to 10% from 13% in Government schools
fell to 5% from 6% in 2021 in police and emergency services. It was 4% in 2020.
stayed at 13% in TAFE and other education industries. It was 17% in 2020.
Distribution of men and women across pay groups
Overall public sector workforce
The pay gap is affected by the uneven distribution of men and women across pay bands and occupations.
Each pay group represents a third of the overall public sector workforce:
lowest pay group: less than $79,658
middle pay group: $79,659 to $108,461
highest pay group: $108,462 or more.
Roles in the lowest pay group are mostly filled by women and include:
carers and aides working in health, welfare and education
enrolled nurses and entry-level registered nurses
entry-level teachers.
Roles in the highest pay group include:
managers
medical practitioners
school principals and senior teachers
senior administrative and business professionals
senior nurses, allied health and science professionals
senior operational police, paramedics and firefighters.
Overall, more women are employed in each pay group than men. But the percentage of men in the highest pay group is higher than the percentage of women.
For example:
62,684 of the 221,974 women employed (28%) are in the highest pay group
47,034 of the 106,112 men employed (44%) are in the highest pay group.
You can use the chart to see the number or percentage of men and women in each pay group.
Distribution of salary ranges by gender and industry groups
The distribution of men and women across salary ranges varies across industries. The chart below shows a breakdown of gender distribution across $20,000 salary ranges.
In the Victorian Public Service:
24.0% of men compared to 30.8% of women earn between $90,000 and $109,999
7.0% of men compared to 3.8% of women earn $190,000 or more.
In creative industries, finance, transport and other:
37.1% of men compared to 49.6% of women earn less than $90,000
30.4% of men compared to 16.7% of women earn $130,000 or more.
In police and emergency services:
59.6% of men compared to 70.0% of women earn less than $110,000
16.3% of men compared to 10.7% of women earn $130,000 or more.
In public healthcare:
25.4% of men compared to 32.1% of women earn less than $70,000
19.3% of men compared to 31.8% of women earn between $90,000 and $109,999
20.8% of men compared to 4.7% of women earn $190,000 or more.
In TAFE and other education:
13.5% of men compared to 29.3% of women earn less than $70,000
55.3% of men compared to 39.8% of women earn $90,000 or more.
In water and land management:
46.2% of men compared to 51.8% of women earn between $70,000 and $109,999
20.0% of men compared to 16.2% of women earn $130,000 or more.
In government schools:
14.3% of men compared to 28.7% of women earn $69,999 or less
45.1% of men compared to 33.9% of women earn $110,000 or more.
Victorian Public Service
Each pay group represents a third of the total Victorian Public Service workforce, which includes the:
lowest pay group: less than $91,337
middle pay group: $91,338 to $116,256
highest pay group: $116,257 or more.
More women than men are employed overall. But the percentage of men and women is unevenly distributed across the pay groups.
For example:
8,180 of the 22,371 men employed (37%) are in the highest pay group
9,885 of the 33,057 women employed (30%) are in the highest pay group
6,825 of the 22,371 men employed (31%) are in the middle pay group
12,431 of the 33,057 women employed (38%) are in the middle pay group.
You can use the chart to view the number or percentage of men and women across the pay groups.
Gender pay gap across Victorian Public Service pay classification, based on average salary
The gender pay gap in each VPS grade is small. The largest gap is in the Senior Technical Specialist grade with a gap of 2.8% or $5,793.
Median gender pay gap by occupation group
The median gender pay gap for non-casual employees varies by occupation group:
the pay gap favours men in all major occupation groups
the largest pay gap is 24.2% or $21,590 in favour of men for community and personal service workers. This includes carers and welfare support occupations and police, fire and paramedic occupations.
the smallest pay gap is 0.3% in favour of men for the managers occupation group.
Median gender pay gap by age
The median gender pay gap for non-casual employees increases with age:
the lowest pay gap is 2.5% or $1,670 for employees aged 15 to 24 years
the pay gap is 17.9% or $19,686 for employees aged for 65+ years.
Data set
This data set covers June 2018 to June 2022.
We source this data from our annual workforce and executive data collections that cover over 1,800 Victorian public sector employers.
Remuneration
This file has the following remuneration measures, based on full-time base salaries for non-casual Victorian public sector employees:
median base salary and distribution of employees within each salary band by industry, gender and Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander identity
median base salary for each major occupation in public entities by gender
mean base salary for each Victorian Public Service classification by gender
median base salary for each Victorian Public Service classification by gender.
