How many public sector jobs have really been axed?

Explainer - Thousands of jobs have been axed as part of the government's cost-saving exercise. But as Lauren Crimp reports, it's not easy finding consensus on the right way to count the cuts.

When the coalition government came to power in 2023, it set out to slash public spending, pledging to "move resources out of bureaucracy and into the front line".

As a result, jobs across the public sector were on the chopping block. Of course, economic pain was also being felt in the private sector, where jobs were also being culled.

The coalition's cuts followed a 34 percent growth in the public service between 2017 and 2024, much of which was under the Labour government.

The moves were slammed by the opposition and unions, but Finance Minister and then Public Service Minister Nicola Willis said the public had not got bang for buck under the former government.

From April 2024 to the end of the year, RNZ kept careful count of jobs lost as belts were tightened, using information provided by the organisations themselves to understand the scale of the changes.

And in October RNZ asked every ministry, department, Crown entity, Crown agent, departmental agency and Crown research institute (113 in total) whether they had made cuts in response to the government's cost-saving initiative - 56 had.

The process involved clarifying with organisations things like whether job loss numbers they provided were net or gross, to ensure we were consistent in our approach.

Earlier this month TVNZ's Q + A host Jack Tame put RNZ's count - around 9500 - to Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche.

"I'm not sure it's the correct number actually, because I'm told it's 2000," Roche said.

Willis expressed a similar sentiment, saying the media - including RNZ - had reported incorrect numbers.

So why the disagreement?

The Public Service Commission supports the government to implement policies and deliver services, and collates workforce data.

Its figures showed between December 2023 and December 2024 there were 2731 fewer full-time equivalent (FTE) staff.

RNZ's count reached 9520 by the end of December 2024. That is the net number - taking into account that while organisations disestablished roles, some also created new ones as they reshuffled their workforce.

Read RNZ's detailed reporting of public sector job cuts.

The Commission's numbers do not include vacancies, nor jobs gone at every single Crown organisation, because they do not fall under its jurisdiction. RNZ included both in its tally.

"This might explain the discrepancy between our number and the much larger number some media have been using," a spokesperson for the Commission said.

Should Crown entities be included?

RNZ included jobs lost at Crown entities in its count - as well as those in the core public service - to show the breadth of agencies affected by the government's savings initiative.

Crown entities are responsible for a range of public services and while they're part of government and owned by the Crown, they're run by independent boards.

They include big employers like Health NZ, Kāinga Ora, Police and the Defence Force, as well as smaller entities such as AgResearch, GNS and Niwa.

The head of Victoria University's School of Government, Karl Lofgren said RNZ's tally of jobs lost was "as good as any".

"I'm a bit confused why the current government is surprised by your numbers."

It was difficult to assess the size of the wider public sector (Crown entities as well as the core public service) because solid workforce data only existed for the core public service, he said.

Another school of government professor and senior fellow at Motu Research, Arthur Grimes said job loss counts would differ depending on what was being measured.

"It's legitimate to include Crown entities along with the core public service, if that's what you're trying to measure. If you're only trying to measure core public service, obviously you wouldn't," he said.

"But if the question is jobs lost from entities, core public sector or otherwise, that are funded by the state sector, then I think adding them [Crown entities] in makes sense."

Lofgren agreed - "I find it a bit difficult to understand why that should be excluded" - as did associate professor at the university's school of management, Geoff Plimmer.

"When people think about cuts to public servants, they don't draw a distinction between Crown agencies and ... core Wellington-based government departments," he said.

"People will want to know how many people have lost their jobs, and whether they meet the fine-grain distinction in the Public Finance Act between a core government department and a Crown agency or a Crown entity is by the by."

But there is some disagreement over the issue of vacant jobs.

Are already vacant jobs 'jobs'?

RNZ decided to include vacancies because they represented jobs that once existed, but no longer do because of the belt tightening.

Victoria University school of management senior lecturer Stephen Blumenfeld said it was legitimate to count vacant jobs, but it was impossible to know whether someone would have ever been hired into those positions.

"There's an assumption being made that the position is vacant but it's intended to be refilled at some time in the future, whether or not that's the case," he said.

"If they're intending to fill the job, I think it is fair to call that a job that is not filled. But the question is, really, how many of those jobs would have been filled otherwise?"

But Plimmer said vacant jobs should not have been included in the tally of those lost.

Some went unfilled for a long time and were not intended to be filled, he said.

"They're very much just paper abstracts, they don't really exist until someone is in the job, doing the job."

Agencies might hold vacancies without filling them to attract budget funding, said Plimmer.

But for the most part it was simply a nuisance to get rid of vacant jobs and keeping them gave organisations flexibility, he said.

Comparing apples with apples

RNZ has now tallied up a best estimate of what our count might have been if we had matched the Public Service Commission and counted jobs lost only in the core public service, not including vacancies.

Let's break it down a bit.

RNZ's count of jobs lost in the public service alone, including vacancies, was 5247.

It gets tricky to subtract vacancies from that, because not all organisations made the distinction between vacant and filled roles. When organisations specified how many of the disestablished positions were vacant, RNZ sought to report that.

Our best estimate, from the organisations that did provide that information, was that 1090 vacant jobs were cut.

Taking that number off the 5247 jobs lost in the public service gets us to 4157 - a little closer to the Public Service Commission's 2731, but with the caveats noted.

And some of those that didn't confirm vacancy numbers had reported pretty big cuts - for example, the Ministry of Social Development which slashed about 900 jobs and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment which downsized by about 400 roles.

And it's worth noting that in some cases, vacancies made up a big portion of roles gone: for example, the Department of Conservation had a net loss of 124 jobs, by disestablishing 257 permanent positions (of which 114 were vacant) and creating 133 new ones.

Growth in public service important context

Grimes said it was vital that any count of job loss numbers were put into context, including significant growth in the public service.

"Otherwise you get a very distorted picture of job losses if you're only looking at it over a very short-term period," he said.

"I think it's very misleading to just look at the short-term figure."

The public service - not including Crown entities - grew 34 percent between June 2017 and June 2024, Public Service Commission workforce statistics showed.

It had been increasing about 5 percent a year until 2022, but in the year from June 2023 it rose 0.7 percent.

At the end of June 2024, there were 63,537 full-time equivalent staff - up slightly on a year prior, but down from 65,699 in December 2023.

At the end of December 2024, there were 62,968 full-time equivalent staff - down 0.9 percent since June 2024, and down 4.2 percent since December 2023.

Willis stands by comments, Collins clarifies differences

RNZ laid out the differences between its numbers and the Public Service Commission's, and asked Willis whether she stood by her comments that RNZ had been incorrectly reporting job losses.

"Minister Willis stands by her past comments that RNZ's job tallies were wrong and completely inaccurate," a spokesperson from her office said.

They said other questions, about whether including Crown entities and vacancies better reflected the number of public jobs lost, should be addressed to Public Service Minister Judith Collins.

Collins said RNZ was conflating job losses in the public service with those that have occurred in the wider public sector, which are accountable to their boards.

"The job losses that occurred in the public service were the result of the Government's Fiscal Savings Programme where departments were asked to find savings of 6.5 - 7.5 percent.

"Additional job losses have occurred in both the public service and the wider public sector for a variety of reasons, but these weren't subject to the Fiscal Savings Programme and are not included in how job losses were calculated and communicated."

They did not count vacancies being disestablished as job losses, Collins said.

"These were vacant roles, so no one lost a job as a result."

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