Total Public Sector Wages Bill — Methodology and Sources
What this measures
Total annual wages bill for Vic state general government employees, in $bn. Defined as Superannuation expenses + Other employee expenses from the ABS Government Finance Statistics operating statement — the same definition state Treasuries use in budget papers.
How values are derived
Direct read from ABS 5512.0 Government Finance Statistics, Annual, Table 1 (Vic State General Government Operating Statement), summing two line items:
- Superannuation expenses (employer super contributions + imputed defined-benefit accruals)
- Other employee expenses (cash salaries + wages, allowances, leave loading, etc.)
This excludes contractor spend (which sits in "Other non-employee expenses"), which is a deliberate scope choice — contractor labor is a labor cost economically but not a wages bill.
CPI deflation uses RBA all-groups CPI G1 (FY mean of quarterly). Per-capita uses ABS Estimated Resident Population at 30 June.
Why ABS GFS, not Vic BP
State budget papers report the same definition, but ABS provides a cross-state-comparable series with consistent classification rules. The Vic-specific BP5 number should match the ABS GFS figure to within a few hundred million in any given year.
Caveats
- Includes both cash wages and imputed super expenses — this matches how state treasuries report "employee expenses" in their operating statements
- Does NOT include public-sector employees of public non-financial corporations (PNFC) like state-owned utilities — only general government sector