Average Federal Public Servant Paid Over $125K Per Year Including Benefits: PBO

Pedestrians cross Elgin Street in view of Parliament Hill in Ottawa in a file photo. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Federal public servants are paid an average of $125,300 per year including salary, benefits, and overtime, says Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Yves Giroux, who noted the wage has risen significantly over the past fiscal year.

While excluding one-time expenditures from his estimate, Giroux’s office wrote in a report published on April 4 that yearly pay per “full-time equivalent” of employees working within the federal public service increased from an average of around $117,500 in the 2019-2020 fiscal year to $125,300 in 2021-2022, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

The increase of over 6.5 percent was mostly due to salary increases, but the PBO wrote in its “Personnel Expenditure Analysis Update“ that government spending on pensions, overtime pay, and bonuses also grew at a fast percentage rate.

Salary raises accounted for about 70 percent of the overall increase in full-time employee compensation average, while higher raises among a handful of federal departments and agencies were mainly responsible for the increase in the average wage.

Giroux’s office said that about 60 percent of the growth in salary spending per full-time worker was due to pay raises for employees within the Canada Revenue Agency, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada, and the Canada Border Services Agency.

The PBO acknowledged that the large average pay increase for full-time federal employees is largely due to “several collective agreements with large bargaining groups” that Ottawa signed in 2020 and 2021.

However, the budget office added that more similar agreements in the near future could further increase federal spending on employee compensation.

“The Government is currently in the process of negotiating with 26 of 28 bargaining groups across the public service,” the PBO wrote. “Some of the demands include salary increases to account for higher inflation.”

As an example, Giroux’s office pointed toward the Public Service Alliance of Canada—one of the largest unions representing federal employees—which is currently negotiating with Ottawa for a 4.5 percent annual salary increase over the 2021-2023 period.

Personnel Spending

The PBO also said in its report that the federal government’s overall personnel spending—which accounts for roughly 60 percent of the government’s operating costs—increased “significantly” over the last two fiscal years.

This increase was due largely to one-time expenditures “such as spending related to actuarial deficiencies.” The PBO added that Ottawa’s spending on personnel increased by just under 31 percent over the past two fiscal years.

“This represents average annual growth of 14.4 per cent, well above the historical average growth of 3.4 per cent per year observed over 2007-08 to 2019-20,” the PBO wrote.

In addition, the increase in average compensation for full-time government employees comes amid record growth in the overall size of the federal public service seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

The PBO’s report says the public service expanded by the equivalent of over 31,200 full-time employees between April 2020 and March 2022.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.