Ontario government employs 11% of province's salaried workers: FAO
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The Ontario government employs more than one in 10 salaried workers in the province, paying them $41.4 billion in salary and wages.
Peter Weltman, Ontario’s new Financial Accountablity Officer (FAO), released those facts in a commentary Wednesday, raising serious questions about Premier Doug Ford’s stated plan to balance the province’s books without laying anybody off.
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Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said the government is currently contracting a line-by-line audit of government spending that will help find efficiencies without costing public sector workers their jobs.
“As an example, the auditor general reviewed only 14 agencies in December of last year, and found $1 billion in savings … and not one single job would be cut to save the billion dollars that she outlined,” Fedeli said. “If you took that and just stretched that right across the broader public sector service, you can see that there are going to be efficiencies found that don’t affect the employees at all.”
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The minister gave the example of changes his government brought in for OHIP+, the public prescription drug program for young people, which he said saved tens of millions of dollars by involving private sector plans but still leaving all those under age 25 covered.
The FAO commentary estimates there are about 650,000 public servants in Ontario this year, of which 88,000 are employed in public administration in government ministries.
Paid for largely through provincial transfer payments, another 341,000 workers are in the education sector, while 221,000 are in the hospital sector, the FAO reports. That represents about 11% of salaried employees in Ontario, the FAO says.
“The average earnings for Ontario public sector workers is estimated to be $1,227 per week in 2018 or roughly $63,800 annually,” the FAO says. “Among public sector workers, Ontario public administration employees have the highest average weekly pay at $1,598 per week, followed by hospital and education workers at $1,158 and $1,176 per week, respectively.”
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Public wages exploded between 2001-09, rising at the rate of 6.7% on average every year.
After the recession of 2009, and until about two years ago, government restraint kept a lid on increases, but that trend has changed, the FAO found.
“More recently, growth in Ontario’s employee compensation expense has accelerated sharply, averaging 4.4% in 2017 and 2018,” the report says.
Collective agreements inked recently point to an acceleration in these wages over the coming years, Weltman reported.
As well, a competitive employment market puts upward pressure on public sector wages, his commentary says.
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