2.5 Million Australians Working in Public Sector Roles, Costing Taxpayers $232 Billion

Out of the public sector workers, 1.9 million were employed by state governments, 365,400 by the federal government (including defence personnel), and 213,500 by local governments.

New South Wales was the state that hired the most public servants across all levels of government at 707,600 employees, followed by Victoria 606,200, Queensland 506,900, and Western Australia 264,300.

The wage bill for public servants employed by state governments was $178.4 billion, federal $37.3 billion, and local $16.4 billion.

"Of course, we need a healthy Public Service, but private sector jobs create revenue for government through taxes paid, whereas Public Service jobs are just straight out costs to government."

Young said that with the fall in business confidence and tightening of their purse strings, Labor governments "begin to spend taxpayers money on splashing tax to help alleviate the inevitable hard times." He described this as a "short-term fix" that just increases debt and inflation, only compounding the problem.

However, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the government recognises its fiscal constraints when managing the federal budget.

Meanwhile, Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume linked public sector spending at both the state and federal level to inflation.

"It is public sector spending across both state and federal that have kept pushing inflation higher and higher. We are now up to about 27.5 percent of GDP as public sector spending, that's well up from the 22.5 percent of the previous decade before COVID.

"Just in my home state of Victoria, public sector spending has increased 7.7 percent in the last 12 months alone."