Public sector grows by more than 4%
(CNS): Public sector workers employed by both core government and its authorities and companies reached a high of 6,250 people at the end of last year, according to the Annual HR Report 2016-17 released by the Portfolio of the Civil Service last month. The 4.6% increase in headcount was driven by a growth in employees at the ministry of education, but many other areas of the public sector also grew, increasing the number of workers by around 257 from the 5,973 government workers as at June 2016. This is the largest government headcount since 2008, when the recruitment freeze was imposed.
Despite efforts by the deputy governor to ensure that Caymanians are prioritized for all public sector vacancies, the percentage of locals fell marginally to 73.5%, down from 75.1% in June 2016. At the Statutory Authorities and Government Companies (SAGCs), almost 75% of employees are Caymanians, while core government ended the year with 72.6% of the workforce being Caymanian.
Although the civil service is made up of 39 different nationalities, the largest group of non-local workers is Jamaican, which is 14.6% of core government workers, while 4.9% of civil servants are British. Despite the increase in Filipinos as a percentage of the population, only 28 people from the Philippines are working in government, or just 0.7% of the service.
The average age of a civil servant is now 43 years old, with the youngest employee being 17 and the oldest 72. With an increase in the mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65, the percentage of workers over 60 reach 7.5% in December 2017, with 47 of those workers over 65.
The public sector now employs significantly more women than men, with a 55-45% ratio in their favour. But there is evidently still a glass ceiling for women, as 49% of the highest pay grade roles were held by women, compared to 51% by men. The top three paying jobs in the civil service — the deputy governor, financial secretary and attorney general — are also held exclusively by men.
The average full-time equivalent annual salary for civil servants at the end of last year was $46,575, an increase of $846 compared to the June 2016 average. This is the third year that an increase in average salary has been reported following decreases in the preceding two fiscal years.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of civil servants earn less than CI$50,000 per year, while 40% earn less than CI$40,000. Meanwhile, 94 public sector employees are taking home more than CI$100,000 a year, and the top three posts (the AG, the FS and the DG) are all earning more than $170,000 per year plus their generous health and pension benefits.
The annual turnover rate in the civil service is currently at 9.6%, slightly higher than 2015/16 but considerably lower than the two previous years. Just over 42% of those who left the service resigned while just over 40% departed because their contract had ended. Meanwhile, 18 people, or 3.3%, were fired and all of them were Caymanian, according to the report.
Category: Government Administration, Jobs, Local News, Politics
Until the CS are interested/willing to look at HOW things are done the number of civil servants will never decrease. Some processes appear to have not changes in decades and it takes more staff to operate the processes in the face of increasing demand.
Hopefully the ongoing move to use IT solutions will help, but NOT if they simply computerize the processes as they exist. EVERY single process should be looked at and modernized/streamlined. Then & only then will the CS headcount begin to reduce.
Try to imagine the CS coping with a 100k population using the same processes & procedures as currently exist! Laws/requirements will need to change but that is not a bad thing.
One must ask… is the civil service getting too big? How many people are in the service on contract that with proper succession planning could have caymanians filling those posts? POCS needs to review contracts/renewals as there is too many people that have contracts and on their retirement plan in these islands that frankly aren’t needed.
Did they factor in the Civil Servants that are currently enjoying paid vacations indefinitely?
Franz and Alden’s Utopia Civil service filled with PPM minions and retired disciples and their foreign backers and friends bleak future Cayman bleak! but you voted for it so feel free to now embrace ppm strong movement minus Cayman or its people.
In the Brac 3 people is hired to do one person job in Government
And yet they are still short of grammar teachers.
Civil servants get fired. I have been reading posts on this site for years that said no one gets fired in the civil service.
I can’t believe the meager salaries in the civil service. Thank Goodness they get free health care.
Articles clerks at major law firms earn more than the average civil servant.
I don’t want to ever read ill informed posts about high salaries in the civil service again. Let’s rein in the SAGC”s like Of Reg who is spending $300k on travel for 22 staff. Most large Ministries in the civil service don’t have such a large travel budget.
9.16pm there have been probably 50,000 people (mostly Caymanians) working for Govt over the last 40 years and you tell me how many have been fired – probably less than 20, and that’s a high estimate.Try answering telephone calls from the public and spending your time on what you are paid for, rather than running your own private businesses in Government time, and you might earn more respect from the public.Articled clerks have all earned their law degree, have to spend 100% of their time working for their employer, often including unpaid overtime, and have to pay for their medical care including a contribution for the indigent, none of which applies to the civil servant on his “meager salary”.
The report goes on to say that the reason for the increase was the recruitment of foreign teachers and police.
Finally a government has made education a
priority and we complain.
We want lower crime but don’t employ more police
I read the biller/paw report and it’s not worth the paper it is written on. They regretfully compared Cayman civil service which includes teachers and police officers to civil servants that doesn’t include those posts. What a waste of money.
Here is a little fun exercise for those who like to play with statistics by comparing Cayman to other countries.
USA has a population of 325 million and receives 75 million tourist each year. That’s a ratio of 13 to 3.
Cayman has a population of 50,000 (for easy math), and received 2 million tourist in 2017. That’s a ratio of 1 to 40.
How many more Immigration officers, police, customs etc. would the USA have to hire if they were suddenly to receive 13 billion tourist each year?
Would our government need all of those Immigration and Custom officers if we only received 15,000 tourist each year?
Look at the number of lawyers, doctors, accountants, and other professionals that we have per head of population, and see if their specialized needs can be satisfied by reducing the civil service by 50%.
civil service = cayman social welfare service.
Caymanians must be incentivized to go into small business especially skills crafts, electrical plumbing and air conditioning, these businesses make lots of money and we want to have a highly skilled highly educated population base so when things slow down we can send a lot of the foreign workers home and still maintain full employment fo Caymanians.
This is just good common sense.
Isn’t it ironic that people who have come here seeking work and made Cayman their home are amongst the first to suggest sending foreign workers back home?
I note 18 civil servants were fired, all Caymanian, and 42% of those who left resigned, of these I wonder how many were required to resign?.
Actually, the real headline is that 22.5% of the Caymanian workforce is employed by Government, more than 1 in 5, although total workforce employed is about 14%. This is more suggestive that Government is propping up Caymanian employment, rather than creating it through economic policies.
1:44 What are you complaining about? If most of them weren’t working for CIG they’d be unemployed – it’s known as job creation 🙂
22.5%…. wow!
the ppm at their finest…
cayman survives on the back of good international economic condition and darts inward investment. if teither of these things change…cayman goes bust.
disgusting and goes to show how much the government is doing to tackle the size/cost of the civil service.
read miller-shaw or e&y reports……
Well done Franz! Great leadership and cost management. You deserve a knighthood too.
Look at the postings and you can see even government tries to exclude Caymanians from managerial positions. Kind of slimy
With good reason. Problem is that once they put them in, it’s near impossible to remove them when they turn out to be a liability. When they do, it’s at great expense. With an expat, it’s a simple non-renewal of contract. How about they stop giving open ended contracts to Caymanians? Problem solved. Never going to happen.