Showing posts with label Public sector earnings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Public sector earnings. Show all posts

Friday, July 21, 2017

21/7/17: What Irish Civil Service is Good For?..


Recently released data on 2011-2016 Irish Government financial metrics shows that despite all the reports concerning the adverse impact of austerity on Irish Government employees, there is hardly any evidence of such an effect at the pay level data.

Specifically, in 2011, total compensation bill for the Irish Government employees stood at EUR 19.389 billion. This 5.39% between 2011 and the lowest point in the cycle (2014 at EUR18.344 billion), before rising once again by 2016 to EUR 19.354 billion. Total savings achieved during 2012-2016 period compared to 2011 levels of expenditure amounted to EUR2.759 billion on the aggregate, or 2.85% (annualized rate of savings averaged less than 0.57% per annum.


Statistically, there simply is no evidence of any material savings delivered by the 'austerity' measures relating to Government compensation bills.

But, statistically, there is a clear evidence of Irish public sector employment poor performance. Oxford University's 2017 International Civil Service Effectiveness Index, http://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/international-civil-service-effectiveness-index, ranked Ireland's Civil Service effectiveness below average when compared across 31 countries covered in the report.

Spider chart below shows clearly two 'outlier' areas of competencies and KPIs in which Irish Civil Service excels: Tax Administration and Human Resource Management. Rest of the metrics: mediocre, to poor, to outright awful.

In fact, Ireland ranks 20th in terms of overall Civil Service Effectiveness assessment, just below Mexico and a notch above Poland. Within index components, Ireland ranked:

  • 16th out of 31 countries in terms of Civil Service Integrity and Policy Making
  • 26th in terms of Openness (bottom 10)
  • 20th in terms of Capabilities, and Fiscal and Financial Management
  • 13th in terms of Inclusiveness
  • 22nd in terms of Attributes (bottom 10)
  • 28th in terms of Regulation (bottom 5)
  • 8th in terms of Crisis Risk Management
  • 1st in terms of Human Resource Management (aka, working conditions and practices)
  • 4th in terms of Tax Administration
  • 31st in terms of Social Security Administration (dead last)
  • 21st in Digital Services and in terms of Functions (bottom 10)
So while managing to score at the top of the league of countries surveyed in terms of pay, perks, hiring and promotion, Irish Civil Service ranked within bottom 10 countries in terms of areas of key performance indicators, relevant to actual service delivery, with exception of one: Tax Collection. May be we shall call it Pay, perks & Tax Collection Service?

But, hey, know the meme: it's all because of severe austerity-driven underfunding... right?.. 



Update:

In response to my post, the Press Office at Dept. of Public Expenditure and Reform posted the following, quite insightful comments on the LinkedIn, that I am reproducing verbatim here:

Secretary General Robert Watt: I was interested in reading this comment – and in particular the data on civil service performance.  There are methodological issues with the Study quoted.  Nevertheless readers might be interested in other data about the effectiveness of the Irish civil and public service which might give a more balanced assessment of performance. Important to consider the evidence before we reach conclusions.  Also, important to note difference between Civil Service (36,000 staff) and wider public service (320,000 staff)

Public Service performance

Over a range of international rankings, the IPA’s annual public service trends publication shows the Irish public service performing above average on many indicators.

The IPA’s Public Sector Trends, 2016

  • Ireland is ranked 1st in the EU as the most professional and least politicised public administration in the Europe;
  • Ireland is ranked 5th for quality of public administration in the EU;
  • Ireland is ranked 6th in the EU for maintenance of traditional public service values (integrity); 
  • Ireland is ranked 4th in the EU for perception of the effectiveness of government decisions;
  • Ireland is ranked 2nd in the EU for encouraging competition and a supportive regulatory environment;
  • Ireland is ranked 4th in the EU for regulatory quality;
  • Ireland is ranked 3rd in the EU in comparison of how bureaucracy can hinder business;
  • Business update of eGovernment services is higher than most of Europe with Ireland ranked 1st for highest update of electronic procurement in Europe;
  • According to the World Bank, Ireland is ranked well above average for Government Effectiveness (although individual rankings are not available);
  • Ireland is ranked 5th in Europe in the competitive advantage provided by the education system; 
  • Ireland ranks 10th for life expectancy at birth and 8th for consumer health outcomes, but slightly below average for the cost-effectiveness of health spending;

The OECD’s Government at a Glance, published in July 2017 shows Ireland ranking strongly across a range of metrics although healthcare is a notable exception:

  • Ireland is ranked 2nd in terms of citizen satisfaction with the education system and schools;
  • Ireland is ranked 6th for citizen satisfaction with the judicial system and the courts and is also in the top 4 best improved countries in the last decade;
  • Ireland is ranked 26th for citizen satisfaction with the healthcare system (slightly below average).

Recent customer satisfaction surveys of the Irish civil service show it delivering its highest customer satisfaction ratings to date. Satisfaction with both the outcome and the service delivered was rated over 80% which is close to the credible maximum.
General Public Civil Service Satisfaction Survey, conducted Q1 2017:      

  • 83% are satisfied with the service they received (up from 77% in 2015);
  • 82% are satisfied with the outcome of their customer service experience (up from 76% in 2015);
  • 46% would speak highly of the civil service (up from 39% in 2015);
  • 87% of customers claim that service levels received either met or exceeded expectations (up from 83% in 2015).

Business Customers Civil Service Satisfaction Survey, conducted, Q4 2016:

  • 82% are satisfied with the service they received (up from 71% in 2009);
  • 82% are satisfied with the outcome of the service received (up from 70% in 2009);
  • 61% felt that the service provided has improved in the last 5 years.

Lots done but more to do!



My reply to the Department comment:

Thanks for the comments on this, Press Office at Dept. of Public Expenditure and Reform. I got similar methodological comments regarding the robustness of the Oxford study via Facebook as well and, as I noted, in the technical analysis part of the paper, Oxford centre does show improved metrics for Irish civil service performance in the later data, which is heartening. Also, noted the apparent dispersion of scores and ranks across countries, with what we might expect as potentially stronger performers being ranked extremely low. Also, noted the issue of data on Social Welfare for Ireland being skewed out of OECD range and impacted by 2011 legacy issues (although it is unclear to me how spending via health budget on social welfare is treated in the OECD and Oxford data). I will post your comments on the blog to make sure these are not lost to the readers.


I agree: lots done and certainly more to do, still. 

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

28/12/2011: ECB: New evidence on public-private pay gap: part 2

As an addendum to the previous post on public-private pay gap study, here are the core results for differences in the pay gap based on various income percentiles:


In the table above, levels of income are referenced to percentiles, so wage differentials are estimated for public-private sector gap per each income percentile. In general, for most countries other than Spain, Ireland and Portugal, "the public sector gap is higher at the lower quantiles and declines along the wage distribution. This is further evidence that the dispersion of the wages in the public sector is much smaller than in the private sector. In this context, public sector employees with low wages earn a higher wage premium relative to higher income employees [again, ex- Spain, Ireland and Portugal]."

In the case of Ireland, the premium lowest for top-earners, second lowest for bottom-earners. The premium rises slightly for 25th percentile and 75th percentile and peaks at 50th percentile. So Irish public sector premium is highest for mid-range earners, lowest for top-range earners, and second lowest for low earners.



28/12/2011: ECB: New evidence on public-private pay gap: part 1


ECB Working Paper 1406 (December 2011) titled "The Public Sector Pay Gap in a Selection of Euro Area Countries" looks at the relationship between public and private sector wages over recent decades in the light of "the increase in public sector employment in many countries, with relevant implications for the overall macroeconomic performance and for public finances". The study considered ten euro area countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain.

Per authors: "According to national account aggregate data, the wage earned by a representative public sector employee is higher than the one earned by a representative private sector employee in all the countries of this study, except Belgium, France and Germany. In particular, in the period 1995-2009 the ratio of public to private compensation per employee is found to be consistently below one in the case of France, slightly below one in the cases of Germany and Belgium, around 1.1 for Austria, around 1.2-1.3 for Italy, Spain, Greece, Ireland and Slovenia, and above 1.5 for Portugal."

"Available data on union membership – referring to the period 1997-2009 depending on the country - show that union density (measured by the ratio between reported membership and employed dependent labour force) is typically much higher in the public than in the private sector (in the European countries approximately twice as much). Among the countries included in this study, union density rates are relatively high in Belgium (around 50%), followed by Austria, Ireland, Italy and Portugal (in the 30- 40% range) and Germany (27%); it is relatively low in France (about 8%) and Spain (16%)."


The summary of the premium evolution is provided here:
In the chart above, Ireland has the second highest gap after Portugal.

The paper provides a reminder of a number of studies that have examined the public-private sector wage gap in Ireland:
  • Boyle at. al. (2004) report wage premia for public sector workers, greater for low-paid workers and smaller for public sector workers at the top of the earnings distribution using microdata from the European Community Household Panel Survey. 
  • Foley and O’Callaghan (2009), using micro data from the 2007 National Employment Survey, also find a sizable public sector wage premium, highest at the lower ends of the earnings distribution. The authors use a variety of estimation techniques and control for work place and employee characteristics such as age, education, gender, occupation, etc. However, the authors urge caution in reaching a definitive conclusions on the average public sector premium. 
  • Kelly et. al. (2009), using data from the 2003 and 2006 National Employment Surveys, analise the public- private sector wage gap in Ireland. Their results indicate that the public sector pay premium increased considerably from 14 to 26 per cent between 2003 and 2006. Moreover, they also reported that there was significant variation across public service sub-sectors.


The ECB research provides controls for a number of variables that can theoretically explain diferences in pay between public and private sector, such as education as skills proxy and gender,  earnings groupings by percentiles,  and firm size. All are found to retain statistically signifcant public sector earnings premium in the case of Ireland. 

The study also looks at one specific category - Education. "On average workers in “Education” earn much higher wages with respect to workers with similar characteristics in the private sector relative to workers in the other sub-sectors, while workers in the “Health” sector are less at advantage, and as in the case of Germany even at disadvantage with respect to their private sector counterparts. This finding is confirmed on the basis of a formal statistical test..."



And the premium holds when controlling for workers' own education:

So overall, the study finds that: "A large body of literature has analysed the issue using micro-data on single countries. Most of these studies find a differential in favour of public sector workers, even after taking into account some observable individual characteristics. As in the previous studies, our results, referring to the period 2004-2007, point to a conditional pay differential in favour of the public sector that is generally higher for women, for workers at the bottom of the wage distribution, in the Education and the Public administration sectors rather than in the Health sector. We also find notable differences across countries, with Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain exhibiting higher public sector premia than other countries. The differential generally decreases when considering monthly wages as opposed to hourly wages and if we restrict our comparison to large private firms."

There goes one of those "We are not Greece" comparatives that the Irish Government is so keen on. When it comes to pay premium in the public sector, we are in the Club Med (PIIGS) group after all.



Friday, December 18, 2009

Economics 18/12/2009: Public Sector Earnings & Employment

Per CSO release today: is the Government is losing the fight to keep this economy afloat?

"Average weekly earnings in the Public Sector (ex Health) rose by 2.5% in the year to September 2009 from €945.18 to €969.11 per week. This compares to a rise of 3.2% in the year to June 2009."

Weekly earnings for
  • the Regional Bodies rose by 4.6% (from €815.58 to €852.71)
  • the Education Sector by 3.0%, from €944.49 to €973.10.
  • An Garda Síochána, inclusive of overtime, fell by 0.8% from €1,196.19 to €1,186.37 per week. Their weekly earnings excluding overtime decreased slightly by 0.1% from €1,077.55 to €1,076.22 for the same period.
Over the four year period from September 2005 to September 2009, average weekly earnings in the Public Sector (excluding Health) rose by 14.2% from €848.94 to €969.11:
  • Regional Bodies’ earnings rose by 15.3% (from €739.27 to €852.71),
  • Semi State by 17.2% (from €902.95 to €1,058.46),
  • An Garda Síochána, inclusive of overtime, rose by 8.8%,
  • Education Sector rose by 11.5% in this period,
  • Civil Service and the Defence Sector rose by approximately 18% (from €797.37 to €933.03 and €691.28 to €815.58 per week respectively).
Natural attrition with recruitment bans has produced a decline in PS employment from 369,100 in September 2008 to 360,900 in September 2009 - a decline of 8,200 or 2.22% - way too small compared to the declines in private sector employment and labor force. But the natural reduction rate is accelerating - there was a decrease of just 2,700 in a year to June 2009.

Nonetheless at this rate, it will take Ireland about 20 years before we reach the reasonable levels of public sector employment, comparable to other countries, which stands, given our size of labor force and lack of functional military sector, at around 250,000.

In the year to September 2009 employment in Regional Bodies fell from 40,400 to 37,000, a decrease of 3,400. In the same period there were 1,200 fewer people employed in the Civil Service where numbers dropped to 38,100 in September 2009. Employment in the Health Sector fell to 110,200 in the year to September 2009, a drop of 600. Employment in An Garda Síochána rose by 500 from 14,200 in September 2008 to 14,700 in September 2009.

In the four years to September 2009, employment in the Public Sector rose by 17,300 to 360,900
  • Education Sector from 84,700 to 97,200, an increase of 12,500
  • An Garda Síochána rose by 2,400 from 12,300 to 14,700,
  • Health Sector from 101,500 to 110,200, an increase of 8,700,
  • Regional Bodies employment decreased from 38,200 to 37,000, a drop of 1,200.
Updated charts as always (note, data goes back to Q1 2005, unlike CSO's latest release).

Employment numbers first.

Earnings last:
With two details: earnings by category within and outside 1 standard deviation of the mean:showing the lack of overall volatility in the public sector earnings, which shows that the argument offered by the unions that some occupations in PS earn less than others is simply statistically not true. They all earn pretty much the same:
Not a single sub-sector of the PS falls outside 2 standard deviations from the PS mean. Of course, homogeneity is the sign of the lack of proper pricing relative productivity. Then again, it is public sector we are talking about.