Population of the federal public service by executive level

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About the data

When reading the table below, the following information applies:

  • Source of information: Pay System as of March 31 of each year.
  • The federal public service consists of 2 population segments: the core public administration and separate agencies.
  • Departments and agencies in the core public administration are named in schedules I and IV of the Financial Administration Act. The Treasury Board is the employer of this segment of the federal public service.
  • Separate agencies are named in Schedule V of the Act. Separate agencies conduct their own negotiations or set their own classification levels for their employees.
  • Included in this information are:
    • active employees of all employment tenures (indeterminate, term, casual and student)
    • Governor in Council appointees
    • deputy ministers
    • federal judges
  • Excluded from this information are:
    • inactive employees (i.e., employees on leave without pay)
    • ministers’ exempt staff
    • employees locally engaged outside of Canada
    • RCMP Regular Force members
    • RCMP Civilian members
    • Canadian Armed Forces members
  • Population counts for the following separate agencies are not included because their employee information is not available in the Pay System:
    • Canadian Security Intelligence Service
    • National Capital Commission
    • Canada Investment and Savings
    • Canadian Forces Non-Public Funds
    • Security Intelligence Review Committee (before 2010)
  • Data on executives in the federal public service include employees from the Executive group as well as executive equivalents within the separate agencies.
  • Executive equivalents in separate agencies were adjusted in 2016 and as a result, historical years have been adjusted according to this grouping and may not reflect previous figures provided in historical Demographic snapshot of Canada’s public service reports and Clerk of the Privy Council’s Annual Reports to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada.
Population of the federal public service by executive level
Executive level Year
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Core public administration
Executives 4,958 5,035 5,094 5,296 5,626 5,922 6,421 6,870 7,320 7,416 7,555
EX-01
2,620 2,632 2,644 2,750 2,900 3,074 3,315 3,573 3,823 3,823 3,846
EX-02
1,209 1,244 1,289 1,307 1,392 1,467 1,618 1,734 1,841 1,884 1,940
EX-03
848 868 863 909 996 1,028 1,112 1,181 1,269 1,290 1,348
EX-04
206 202 208 232 234 241 256 271 270 295 287
EX-05
75 89 90 98 104 112 120 111 117 124 134
Non-executives 190,607 192,319 194,597 203,016 214,689 225,254 239,318 247,439 263,478 274,736 271,841
Total 195,565 197,354 199,691 208,312 220,315 231,176 245,739 254,309 270,798 282,152 279,396
Separate agencies
Executives 1,382 1,379 1,386 1,382 1,444 1,454 1,551 1,636 1,749 1,739 1,785
EX-01
652 652 659 639 678 668 684 727 770 769 772
EX-02
381 387 400 415 429 442 498 518 553 562 589
EX-03
228 228 223 231 214 227 239 269 294 271 287
EX-04
73 67 63 61 77 68 78 74 79 87 88
EX-05
48 45 41 36 46 49 52 48 53 50 49
Non-executives 60,087 60,246 61,619 63,877 66,224 67,820 72,311 80,012 84,700 83,881 76,784
Total 61,469 61,625 63,005 65,259 67,668 69,274 73,862 81,648 86,449 85,620 78,569
Federal public service
Executives 6,340 6,414 6,480 6,678 7,070 7,376 7,972 8,506 9,069 9,155 9,340
EX-01
3,272 3,284 3,303 3,389 3,578 3,742 3,999 4,300 4,593 4,592 4,618
EX-02
1,590 1,631 1,689 1,722 1,821 1,909 2,116 2,252 2,394 2,446 2,529
EX-03
1076 1096 1086 1140 1210 1,255 1,351 1,450 1,563 1,561 1,635
EX-04
279 269 271 293 311 309 334 345 349 382 375
EX-05
123 134 131 134 150 161 172 159 170 174 183
Non-executives 250,694 252,565 256,216 266,893 280,913 293,074 311,629 327,451 348,178 358,617 348,625
Total 257,034 258,979 262,696 273,571 287,983 300,450 319,601 335,957 357,247 367,772 357,965

Archived information

Archived information is provided for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. It is not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards and has not been updated or modified since it was archived. To access reports no longer available on this webpage, please visit the Government of Canada web archive or Government of Canada publications catalogue.

Open datasets

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For more information, review the Open Data Licence Agreement, visit the Open Data Portal or browse more datasets.

population data will be published on Open Government at later date.

Data file Description
Population of the federal public service by executive level These data present population counts by executive level for the federal public service (all departments and agencies governed by the Financial Administration Act (FAA) Schedules I, IV and V) from to .

Glossary of key terms

To assist you with your analysis of federal public service human resources data, we have compiled a glossary of key terms that are used in many of the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer’s (OCHRO) demographic snapshots and reports. This glossary has been developed to help provide a common language across OCHRO’s demographic snapshots and reports.

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