The State election will be held on Saturday 26 November 2022. During the caretaker period (commencing 6.00 pm on Tuesday 1 November 2022) content will only be added to this website in line with the caretaker conventions.
Remuneration, pay bands and gender pay gap
Facts, visuals and data on the remuneration of executives and the gender pay gap.
Unless stated otherwise, this workforce data shows you numbers as at June 2022.
This data doesn’t show the machinery of government changes that came into effect on 1 January 2023.
You can use the dropdown menu at the bottom of each chart to filter the data sets.
For some visuals, we give you a breakdown of the data by:
Victorian Public Service (VPS): the 9 departments, Victoria Police (VPS employees) and 46 authorities and offices defined to be Victorian Public Service employers under the Public Administration Act 2004
Public sector industry groups: all other public sector bodies outside the VPS that have a public function, grouped together by industry.
Overall public sector workforce: VPS and public sector industries combined.
The industry groups are:
creative industries, finance, transport and other
government schools
police and emergency services
public health care
TAFE and other education
water and land management.
At the end of this page, find Excel datasets for June 2018 to June 2022.
This data doesn’t show any changes that came into effect on 1 July 2022.
Executive pay bands as at June 2022
For Chief Executive Officers employed by a public entity, the minimum remuneration package is classified as Senior Executive Service (SES) 1 but starts at $139,007 per annum.
Victorian public sector executive remuneration bands
Classification
Minimum total remuneration package ($) per annum
Maximum total remuneration package ($) per annum
SES 1
199,014
257,111
SES 2
257,112
370,331
SES 3
370,332
493,229
Number of Victorian public sector executives by band
Distribution of Victorian Public Service executive remuneration by gender
Distribution of Victorian public entity executive remuneration by gender
Median executive remuneration and gender pay gap
How we work out the gender pay gap
Using Victorian Public Service executives as an example, this is how we measure the pay gap:
find out what the median pay is for men ($257,112) and women ($234,490)
work out the difference between those two numbers ($257,112 minus $234,490 equals $22,622)
express the difference as a percentage of the men’s median salary ($22,622 is 8.8% of men’s median salary of $257,112).
So the pay gap for executives in the Victorian Public Service is 8.8%.
We only report the gender pay gap in a binary way (men and women) because the number of employees with self-described gender identity is currently too small to analyse.
Remuneration and gender pay gap
Victorian Public Service median executive pay at June 2022:
$234,490 for women
$257,112 for men
$22,622 or 8.8% is the pay gap based on median pay.
Public entity median executive pay at June 2022:
$257,117 for women and men
0% is the median pay gap.
The gender pay gaps continue to favour men, changing from:
7.9% at June 2021 to 8.8% at June 2022 for Victorian Public Service executives
1.6% at June 2021 to 0% at June 2022 for public entity executives
5.7% at June 2021 to 6.2% at June 2022 for all executives in the overall public sector workforce.
The gender pay gap for Victorian Public Service executives rose to 8.8% from 6.6% at June 2020 primarily due to:
more men employed in higher-paid roles like infrastructure building projects
a rise in women promoted to executive roles at entry-level remuneration rates.
Understanding the gender pay gap for public entity executives
We use the median or ‘middle’ point to calculate the gender pay gap because it’s less influenced by extreme salaries or outliers. The median remuneration for public sector executives in 2022 is the base of the Senior Executive Service-2 (SES-2) remuneration band at $257,112. This is driven by the number of newly appointed executives who started at the base SES-2 remuneration band.
The mean or average gender pay gap is 3.4% or $9,601. This is because of the higher proportion of men earning very high salaries (mainly chief executive officers).
The average pay gap favours men in all classification bands. The largest gap is 5.7% or $26,118 in the SES-3 pay band.
Average gender pay gap by band
Average gender pay gap for executives by band
Impact of the Major Transport Infrastructure Authority on the pay gap
The Major Transport Infrastructure Authority (MTIA) sits within the Transport portfolio.
It’s responsible for infrastructure projects including:
Level Crossing Removal
North-East Link
West Gate Tunnel
Major Road Projects Victoria
Regional Rail Revival.
Due to the nature of these projects, MTIA employs a large number of high-paid executives. Most of them are men.
This has a large impact on the overall executive remuneration pay gap.
If MTIA executives were excluded, the median gender pay gap for executives would:
fall from 8.8% to 5.6% in the Victorian Public Service
fall from 6.2% to 5.7% in the overall public sector workforce.
This table shows how including and excluding the Major Transport Infrastructure Authority (MTIA) impacts the executive gender pay gap in the public sector.
