Key facts
Overall public sector workforce
At June 2024, for non-casual public sector employees (including executives) the:
- median salary is $97,243
- mean (average) gender pay gap is 18.1% or $22,358 (compared to 18.0% or $21,773 in 2023)
- median gender pay gap is 10.1% or $10,681 (compared to 10.0% or $10,534 in 2023).
The gender pay gap favours men across most occupations and increases with age.
Overall, while more women are employed in each pay group, a higher proportion of men are in the higher pay groups compared to women.
Victorian Public Service (VPS)
At June 2024, for non-casual VPS employees (including executives) the:
- median salary is $106,059
- mean (average) gender pay gap is 6.7% or $8,028 (compared to 6.5% or $7,747 in 2023)
- median gender pay gap has reduced to 0% (compared to 1.8% or $1,914 in 2023).
The mean gender pay gap in the VPS is driven by a higher proportion of men in the higher pay groups compared to women.
Gender pay gap by industry
The median gender pay gap varies by industry group.
In 2024, the median gender pay gaps were:
- 14.9% for TAFE and other education industries (up from 13.7% in 2023)
- 13.5% for creative industries, finance, transport and other industries (up from 13.0% in 2023)
- 10.3% for government schools (unchanged from 2023)
- 6.1% for public health care (down from 6.7% in 2023)
- 3.4% for water and land management (down from 4.8% in 2023)
- 2.9% for police and emergency services (up from 1.3% in 2023)
- 0.0% for the Victorian public service (down from 1.8% in 2023).
Employee pay
How public sector pay is set
There are over 100 enterprise agreements that cover all non-executive employees in the Victorian public sector.
The agreements set employee pay, terms and conditions. They differ based on industry group, employer and occupation.
Agreements are made under the Commonwealth Fair Work Act.
Executive remuneration is set by the Victorian Independent Remuneration Tribunal. See data, facts and visuals on executive remuneration, pay bands and the gender pay gap.
Pay by gender and the gender pay gap
We use the gender pay gap (difference in pay between women and men) as one measure of workplace gender equality.
We report the average (mean) and median (middle point) gender pay gap in line with reporting from the Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector (CGEPS).
Our calculations may be different from CGEPS because we don’t include pay data from universities and local council employees.
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 a small number of men earn 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.
How we calculate the gender pay gap
We currently report the overall gender pay gap in a binary way (between men and women). This is because the number of employees who self-described their gender identity is too small for robust analysis.
To work out the median pay gap for the overall public sector workforce we:
- Find the median full-time equivalent pay for men ($106,059) and women ($95,378).
- Calculate the difference between those 2 numbers ($106,059 minus $95,378 equals $10,681).
- Express the difference as a percentage of the median salary for men ($10,681 is 10.1% of men’s median salary of $106,059).
- Based on this approach, the median pay gap for the public sector is 10.1%.
The same approach is used to work out the mean pay gap using the average (mean) full-time equivalent pay for men and women.
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.
Victorian Public Service (VPS)
Gender pay gap across VPS pay classification, based on average salary
The chart below shows the average (mean) gender pay gap across VPS grades.
A positive number indicates a gender pay gap in favour of men. A negative number indicates a gender pay gap in favour of women.
The higher VPS grades have a gender pay gap in favour of men, whereas lower VPS grades have a gender pay gap in favour of women.
Median gender pay gap by occupation group
The chart below shows the median (middle point) gender pay gap for different occupation groups.
A positive number indicates a gender pay gap in favour of men. A negative number indicates a gender pay gap in favour of women.
Median gender pay gap by age group
The chart below shows the median (middle point) pay gap for different age groups.
A positive number indicates a gender pay gap in favour of men. A negative number indicates a gender pay gap in favour of women.