The pandemic has not dampened the rise in public service pay. The average salary of senior civil servants jumped by $5,500 all at once, and for the first time, one in ten state employees earns $100,000 or more.
Departments and agencies have more and more regular employees, year after year. COVID-19 has not changed the game, even if it has slowed the trend all the same.
Quebec had 55,666 public servants in March 2021, 532 more than the previous year and 14.5% more than five years ago, according to the most recent update from the Treasury Board.
The spokesperson, Antoine Tousignant, also made a point of highlighting this decrease in the growth of the State’s workforce, which “is at its lowest in the last year”.
But if we note a decrease in the number of workers, office staff, managers are always more numerous in the public apparatus.
Salary in the six figures
The proportion of state workers whose annual remuneration crosses the symbolic threshold of $100,000 is always greater. More than 5,300 civil servants now earn six-figure salaries.
It is also the remuneration of state mandarins that has experienced the most significant increase in the last year. On the eve of the pandemic, the average salary for senior executives was just over $159,000. A year later, they pocket an average of nearly $165,000.
During the same period, technicians and workers saw their average salary increase by a few tens of dollars, while the salary of office staff decreased.
The Quebec Public and Parapublic Service Union deplores this “double standard”.
“The people I represent are the lowest paid, they are never the ones who will benefit from the largesse of the government”, maintains the president, Christian Daigle.
Services to the population
He adds that it is nevertheless its members who provide services to the population and have been without a collective agreement since April 2020, for lack of an agreement with Quebec.
And since it favors the hiring of managers to the detriment of other categories of employment, the government must turn to the private sector at great expense to meet its staffing needs, insists Mr. Daigle.
Still in the majority (60%) in the public service, the fairer sex is still under-represented in decision-making positions, we can also see in the portrait of the workforce of the State.
Name of civil servants
In the regular workforce (at the end of the fiscal year)
- Mars 2017 : 48 622
- Mars 2018 : 51 381
- Mars 2019 : 53 466
- Mars 2020 : 55 134
- Mars 2021 : 55 666
According to gender (mars 2021)
- Men: 22 530 (40,5 %)
- Women: 33 136 (59,5 %)
According to the treatment (mars 2021)
- $100,000 to $109,999: 1603
- $110,000 to $119,999: 1272
- $120,000 or more: 2454
Average treatment of senior members management in ETC (full-time equivalents)
- 2016-2017 : 151 225 $
- 2017-2018 : 153 702 $
- 2018-2019 : 156 428 $
- 2019-2020 : 159 345 $
- 2020-2021 : 164 879 $
Source: Treasury Board. These data exclude occasional workers, students and interns, as well as the health and education networks.
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