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Population of the Federal Public Service

From: Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

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About the data

When reading the table below, the following information applies:

  • Source of information: Pay System as of 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)
Population of the federal public service and Canada
Year Population of the Federal Public Service Population of the Core Public Administration Population of Separate Agencies Canadian Population (Statistics Canada)
Table 17-10-0009-01 (as of April 1st)table 1 note *
2010 282,980 216,596 66,384 33,890,461
2011 282,352 217,224 65,128 34,230,555
2012 278,092 212,028 66,064 34,592,192
2013 262,817 200,516 62,301 34,956,567
2014 257,138 195,330 61,808 35,320,540
2015 257,034 195,565 61,469 35,606,734
2016 258,979 197,354 61,625 35,970,407
2017 262,696 199,691 63,005 36,397,141
2018 273,571 208,312 65,259 36,903,671
2019 287,983 220,315 67,668 37,437,243
2020 300,450 231,176 69,274 38,006,941
2021 319,601 245,739 73,862 38,140,918
2022 335,957 254,309 81,648 38,683,567
2023 357,247 270,798 86,449 39,739,633
2024 367,772 282,152 85,620 41,012,563

Table Notes

Footnote *

Statistics Canada. Table 17-10-0009-01 Population estimates, quarterly. Canadian population figures have been updated with the latest Statistics Canada’s figures.

Return to table 1 note * referrer

Open datasets

This information is published in HTML, XML and CSV formats and is part of the government’s Open Data Portal. The portal offers machine-readable formats, enabling citizens, private sector and non-government organizations to leverage this data in innovative and value-added ways.

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

Data file Description
Population of the federal public service These data present population counts 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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