The Apparent Stress of Government Jobs

Cross-posted to the Blogs Canada E-Group.

Recent research from the WarrenShepell Research Group has found that about 13.5% of provincial government employees seek some kind of help from employee assistance programs, compared with an average of 8% in the private sector. Here’s a decaying link from the Vancouver Sun as well. The report observes “Research indicates that public sector employees, on average, are less flexible and adaptive than their private sector counterparts faced with change” and goes on to say:

“Normally, the public sector employee has had more stability in the job and the job function compared to the private sector employee,” said Gerry Smith, the group’s vice-president of organizational health and one of the study’s authors. “In general, the public sector employee also works fewer hours and has a more formalized work arrangement. The private sector is expected to be much more flexible.”

Consequently, says Smith, there is a greater resiliency within the private sector to change.Public sector employees, by contrast, he adds, have a tougher time with it, and stress levels rise commensurately.

I had a brief look through the report, and found some interesting demographic data:

The mean age of provincial government workers in 1997 was 42 years – up from 34 years in 1976. This partially reflects widespread downsizing of younger workers in the 1990s and hiring freezes. At the federal and provincial levels combined, close to 60% of the workforce have more than 10 years of seniority.

The proportion of older workers is also increasing. The most significant employee growth
group for governments in general is 45- to 54-year-olds. They now account for 30% of government workforces. While the Canadian population in general is aging, this trend is more pronounced in the public sector. Statistics Canada reports a higher percentage of older workers in the public sector compared to the private sector. The general government population, specifically, is aging more rapidly than the private sector.

With respect to gender,women (52%) have exceeded men in the provincial government since the early 1990s.However, the split is exactly reversed for public administration across Canada. One interesting finding is that public administration workers across Canada, on average, lose more days of work annually (10.28) than goods-producing industries (8.78) and other service producing
industries (8.58). Female public administration workers, alone, lose an average of 12.10 days per year.

These reports are doing nothing to assuage my bias against public-sector jobs. I guess it’s only natural that older employees would require more assistance programs, but it’s a discouraging trend. The age statistics alone are worrying–what will be the median age in government in another five or ten years? I learned a long time ago not to look to my government for innovation, but these trends aren’t helping matters.