Employee turnover and mobility

Unless stated otherwise, this workforce data shows you numbers as at June 2021.

For some visuals, we give you a breakdown of the data by:

Victorian Public Service (VPS): the 9 departments, Victoria Police (VPS employees) and 45 authorities and offices defined to be 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.

Figures on this page include:

employees who move from one public sector agency to another
ongoing and fixed-term staff, but not casuals
new start rates: non-casual employees who started with their organisation as a percentage of all non-casual employees employed in July 2010 to June 2021
separation rates: non-casual employees who left their organisation as a percentage of all non-casual employees employed in July 2020 to June 2021
mobility rates: employees who moved from one Victorian Public Service agency to another Victorian Public Service agency.

At the end of this page, find Excel datasets for June 2015 to June 2021.

Read more about how we define the public sector or see the full list of public sector agencies.

How we calculate new start and separation rates

We calculate new start rates and separation rates based on all ongoing and fixed-term employees hired in the year July 2020 to June 2021.

This includes all non-casual employees who started at or left their organisation, but excludes employees who started or left due to machinery of government transfers.

Take me to facts and visuals on:

Key facts
Non-casual employee new start and separation rates
Mobility rates in non-casual employees (Victorian Public Service only)

Get the data set on:

Employee turnover

Key facts

All public sector

49,995 non-casual employees started with a Victorian public sector body
35,007 non-casual employees separated from a Victorian public sector body.

Victorian Public Service Only

15,664 non-casual employees started with a Victorian Public Service agency
76% of new employees (11,909) were employed on a fixed-term basis
7,828 non-casual employees separated from a Victorian Public Service agency.

Non-casual employee new start and separation rates

Public sector

Public entities

New start and separation rates of non-casual public sector employees by age

This graph shows the percentage of non-casual employees who started with a new employer between July 2020 and June 2021.

For example, 49% of employees under 25 years of age started during the 2020-21 financial year.

Distribution of new starting and separating non-casual public sector employees by age

This graph shows a percentage breakdown of all the new starting and separating non-casual employees by age.

For example, of all the non-casual employees who started with a new employer during the 2020-21 financial year, 17% of them were under 25 years of age.

Mobility rates in the Victorian Public Service, non-casual employees

The Victorian Public Service is a single employer with common terms and conditions for employees, made up of:

9 departments
Victoria Police
45 offices and authorities

As a large and diverse employer, Victorian Public Service employees can build satisfying careers across a service-wide structure.

In July 2019, the government set up the Jobs and Skills Exchange to support mobility in the Victorian Public Service.

Since its introduction along with a new recruitment policy, the number of people transferring between Victorian Public Service agencies has increased from 1,175 to 2,506.

Between 2020-21, 2,506 or 4.4% of all ongoing and fixed-term employees moved between Victorian Public Service employers.

The mobility rate between financial years:

doubled from 2018-19 to the 2019-20
fell between 2019-20 and 2020-21 due to a rise in public service employment in response to COVID-19 service demands.

Mobility intentions of Victorian Public Service employees

In the People matter survey 2021 we asked respondents ‘What is your career plan for the next 2 years?’.

We found that:

two-thirds of respondents intended to stay at their current organisation
only 3.1% intended to move to another Victorian Public Service agency.

Data set for this topic

This data set covers June 2016 to June 2021.

We source this data from our annual workforce and executive data collections that cover over 1,800 Victorian public sector employers.