Key terms
Frontline worker
For our estimates, we classify a frontline worker as a Victorian Public Service (VPS) or sector employee who directly delivers services to the public or community as primary function of their role (at least 70% of the time). Service delivery may or may not be in person.
We worked closely with departments to:
- define ‘frontline’
- agree on how to classify frontline roles using the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) descriptions
- identify occupational groups and roles as frontline or non-frontline.
We note that ANZSCO descriptions are applied as a proxy to determine the occupational profile of the VPS.
Key terms used to breakdown the data
We use some key terms to breakdown our data and charts. These include:
- Overall public sector workforce – the Victorian Public Service (VPS), special bodies and public entities combined
- Victorian Public Service (VPS) – the 10 departments, the Victorian Public Sector Commission and administrative offices defined under the Public Administration Act 2004.
- Public entities – all other public sector bodies outside the VPS made up of statutory authorities, corporations and advisory bodies that have a public function.
- Public sector industry groups – public entities grouped together by industry.
You can use the dropdown menu at the bottom of each chart to filter the data sets by the public sector industry groups:
- creative industries, finance, transport and other
- government schools
- police and emergency services
- public health care
- TAFE and other education
- water and land management.
Some charts include breakdowns from previous years, while others only show the most recently available data. This is because some data points are new or can’t be compared to earlier releases.
Read more about how we define the public sector or see the full list of public sector employers.
Data sources
We’ve sourced the 2024 data from:
- the Commission’s annual workforce data collection – data from all public sector organisations and the Victorian Public Service.
- the People matter survey – the Victorian public sector’s independent employee opinion survey run by the Victorian Public Sector Commission.
The People matter survey data:
- only represents the Victorian public sector employees who chose to do the survey
- doesn’t show data from 2020 because some organisations couldn’t participate due to impacts from COVID-19.
The order of the data doesn’t reflect a preference for any organisation, industry or demographic.
We reserve the right to change or correct information at any time.
Demographic-based questions
For demographic data sourced from the People matter survey, the Commission uses strict rules to protect the privacy and anonymity of respondents at every stage of the survey.
We don’t release employee opinion results for demographic groups where industries have less than 30 total responses.
We included a ‘prefer not to say’ option for some demographic questions.
Respondents may choose ‘prefer not to say’ for a range of reasons.
Read our privacy policy.
Rounding
Due to rounding, the breakdown of some numbers won’t add up to 100.