What the New APS Pay Data Says About Your Next Rise

If you work in the federal bureaucracy, the annual APS pay data release is the closest thing you will ever get to a published market rate for your own job. The Australian Public Service Commission's latest snapshot, taken at 31 December 2025, covers 187,279 employees — 183,819 below the Senior Executive Service and 3,460 within it. That is not a sample of willing volunteers. It is close to a headcount of what everybody was actually paid.

The headline movement was modest. Below SES level, the median increase came in at 3.5 per cent over the year, which columnist Verona Burgess described in The Mandarin as sitting below inflation. Around 70 agencies made upward adjustments outside the standard cycle, but those were small — between 0.1 and 1 per cent. Total APS headcount rose by 5,094 people, or 2.8 per cent, on the December 2024 figure of 182,185.

The timing is what makes this year's numbers matter to you personally. The current service-wide deal is running out of road, the government released its 2026 workplace relations policy in June, and the CPSU has lodged a claim well above what agencies have been paying. Everyone at the table is about to start quoting these tables at each other. Knowing how they work is genuinely useful.

Where the APS Pay Data Actually Comes From

Each year the commission collects remuneration figures from every agency employing staff under the Public Service Act 1999. Agencies get a confidential cut showing how they sit against their peers; the public gets an aggregated version. Because participation is effectively mandatory rather than voluntary, the dataset avoids the self-selection problem that wrecks most private salary surveys.

That coverage is precisely why it gets used as ammunition. Unions cite it to show real wages slipping. Agencies cite it to justify why their classification structure looks different from the one next door. Both are reading the same tables and both are technically correct, which tells you something about how much room the numbers leave for interpretation.

Why One Median Can Hide a Very Wide Spread

A median is a middle point, not a rate. Inside any single classification the actual spread is far wider than most staff assume, because agencies bargained separately for decades before the service-wide approach arrived. Burgess made the point sharply: at least one APS4 was receiving more in total remuneration than the minimum base salary attached to an SES Band 1 role.

Read that carefully, because it is not quite an apples-to-apples comparison — total remuneration includes superannuation and allowances, while the SES figure is a base-salary floor. But the overlap is real, and it exposes the fragmentation that a single service-wide percentage cannot fix. A uniform rise applied to uneven starting points keeps the unevenness intact.

What This Means for Your Next Pay Rise

Three things are moving at once, and they pull in different directions. Here is how they stack up for someone trying to work out what lands in their account next year.

The 11.2 per cent deal is nearly finished

The current package delivered 4.0 per cent from March 2024, 3.8 per cent from March 2025 and 3.4 per cent from March 2026. The commission's own agreement carries a nominal expiry of 28 February 2027, and most agencies signed to the same rhythm. The March 2026 instalment was the last scheduled increase for many staff.

The union is asking for roughly half again

The CPSU is seeking 5 per cent a year or CPI, whichever is higher, plus consolidated flexible work rights, protections around workplace AI, additional paid leave and guaranteed learning and development time. Against a 3.5 per cent median outcome, that is a substantial gap to close, and the non-pay items may prove harder to trade away than the percentage.

Agency top-ups are where the real variation sits

Those 70 agencies making 0.1 to 1 per cent adjustments are the tell. Service-wide bargaining sets the floor; local remuneration decisions still shift where individual classifications land. If your agency is an outlier on the low side, that is an argument worth making internally rather than waiting for the national round.

How to Read the Tables Without Fooling Yourself

Before you take a figure into a conversation with your manager, check what it is actually measuring. Most arguments about public service pay collapse the moment someone compares two different columns.

• Base salary and total remuneration are different numbers; super and allowances sit only in the second.
• Median movement includes people who were promoted or moved through increments, so it is not the same as the negotiated rise.
• Small agencies can swing an average badly — check the headcount behind any classification.
• A 3.5 per cent median in a year of rising rents and mortgage costs is a real-terms question, not just a percentage.

What to Watch Over the Next Six Months

Pull your own classification's figures from the December 2025 tables and compare them against your payslip before bargaining conversations get serious. If you sit below the median for your level, ask your agency why. And keep an eye on whether the government's service-wide framework holds — because if agency-level top-ups start doing the heavy lifting again, where you work will matter more than what you do.