Ethnic minority representation is on the rise as the civil service continues to get significantly bigger.
Meanwhile, average pay rose last year by the highest percentage in more than a decade.
These are some of the changes to the makeup of the civil service highlighted in the Cabinet Office’s annual civil service statistics release.
Here’s what CSW learnt from the figures.
Significant rise in ethnic minority representation
The latest statistics show that 16.6% of civil servants in 2024 are from an ethnic-minority background, up from 15.4% in 2023. This 1.2 percentage-point increase is the biggest in the last decade.
However, the civil service still has a lower proportion of workers from an ethnic minority background than the working-age population in the UK (17.4%).
Asian civil servants (39,395) make up the largest ethnic-minority group in the civil service, followed by Black civil servants (19,810).
The proportion of civil servants declaring that they have a disability also rose fairly significantly, from 15.8% in 2023 to 16.9% in 2024.
Like ethnic-minority representation, the percentage of civil servants declaring themselves as disabled remains below that of the economically active working age population (18.1%).
The proportion of officials identifying as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or recording their sexual orientation as "other" (LGBO) has also increased once again. Of those who reported their sexual orientation, 6.9% identified as LGBO in 2023-24 compared to 6.4% in 2022-23. This has increased every year since data on sexual orientation was first captured in 2015, when 3.7% identified as LGBO.
The proportion of officials declaring their sexual orientation has also continued to rise, with 72.4% of officials now doing so compared to 38.1% a decade ago.
The proportion of women in the civil service remained stable, meanwhile, with a marginal decrease from 54.6% to 54.5%. Despite there being more women than men in the civil service, women continue to be less represented in senior roles but the gap is shrinking.
At SCS level, 48.2% of officials were women in 2024 compared to 47.9% in 2023 and 37.9% a decade ago. Similarly, the proportion of women at grade 6 and 7 has risen slightly to 49.8%, compared to 49.5% in 2023 and 43.0% in 2014.
Headcount continues to rise significantly
The civil service continued to get bigger, increasing by more than 20,000 between March 2023 and March 2024.
The full-time equivalent headcount was 510,125 as of 31 March, compared to 487,665 the year before, according to the Cabinet Office statistics. This is an increase of 22,460 or 4.6%.
The department suggests referring to the ONS’s quarterly workforce statistics when monitoring changes in the size of the civil service. The latest ONS stats show a similar rise of 22,000 to 511,000 in the last year.
The increase is more than double the 9,000 uptick that happened in 2022-23, with both more civil servants joining and less officials departing in 2023-24. There were 63,330 new entrants compared to 56,760 the year before, and 39,585 people left the civil service, down from 46,080 in 2022-23.
Headcount in 2023-24 increased across all regions, with the largest increase in North West England, hitting 70,900, up from 67,110 in 2023.
The continued increase in the size of the civil service has come despite ministers’ regular announcements in recent years under successive Conservative governments of plans to cut it back.
Earlier this week, chancellor Rachel Reeves scrapped the civil service numbers cap introduced by her predecessor Jeremy Hunt last year.
Her plan to address a £22bn “black hole” in public finances set out that the government would “move away from capping civil service headcount to an approach that ensures departments consider overall value for money in resourcing decisions”. She has asked departments to find 2% cuts to their “back-office” costs.
High rate of dismissals
Of the 39,585 people who left the civil service last year, most were, as usual, from resignations (56%) and retirements (22%).
However, a fairly significant proportion also came from dismissals, the next-most common reason for departure. The 2,915 dismissals in 2023-24 makes up 7.4% all departures: the highest rate since 2019-20, when the departure-dismissal rate was 7.5%.
This is the also the first time dismissals have been the third-most common reason for departures since 2018-19, when the departure-dismissal rate was 7.6%.
As the headcount was around 489,000 at the beginning of the 2023-24 year, the 2,915 dismissals suggest around 0.6% of civil servants were dismissed last year.
Average salary increase biggest in more than a decade
Amid soaring inflation last year, civil servants were given pay rises averaging 5%, the highest in 20 years. It is not surprising, therefore, to see that median salaries in the civil service have risen at their highest level in more than a decade.
The median salary rose to £33,980 in 2024 from £31,920 in 2023, an increase of 6.5%. This came after a 6% increase the year before.
In real terms, however, median salaries have fallen by between 12% and 23% since 2010, depending on grade, according to the Institute for Government.
Gender pay gap falls again
The pay gap between men and women has fallen for a second year running after widening for the first time in six years in 2021-22.
In 2023-24, the median gender pay gap was 8.5%, down from 9.6% in 2022-23 and 11.3% in 2021-22. The gender pay gap is still higher than in 2020-21, however, when it was 8.1%.
The median gender bonus gap has also decreased, from 25.4% in 2022-23 to 22.4% in 2024. This is the lowest the bonus gap has been since 2019-20, when it was 17.4%.