Civil Service workforce jumps 3,000 to highest level for nearly 20 years

This is up from 551,000 in June and a year on year rise of 1.1% from 548,000 in September 2024.

Headcount fell as low as 416,000 in June 2016, the month of the EU referendum.

Since that date, the total has risen steadily, driven chiefly by the impact of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, with growth continuing in more recent years.

In June 2024, just before Labour won the general election, the workforce stood at 546,000, since when it has increased by 8,000.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves used her spring statement in March to announce that Civil Service running costs would be reduced by 15% by the end of the decade.

As well as abolishing quangos such as NHS England, ministers have committed to increasing the proportion of civil servants working in digital and data roles, creating a workforce “fit for the future”.

The Government said in April it planned to cut around 2,100 staff from the Cabinet Office, with 1,200 roles disappearing through redundancies and 900 transferred to other departments.

The latest Civil Service headcount of 554,000 is nearly a third higher (33.2%) than it was at the time of the EU referendum in June 2016, or an increase of 138,000.

The last time quarterly headcount was higher than the current figure was in March 2006, when it stood at 555,000.

The total was on a downwards path during the second half of the 2000s and this trend continued into the 2010s until the EU referendum, after which the headcount began to climb.

It grew by 40,000 in the years between 2016 and the start of the pandemic, as thousands of people were recruited to manage the complex and lengthy Brexit process.

There was then a further jump once the pandemic was under way, as the Government hired staff to oversee huge projects such as the furlough scheme, testing for Covid-19 and the rollout of the vaccination programme.

Civil Service headcount increased by 56,000 between March 2020, when the first lockdown began, and March 2022.

Of the current workforce of 554,000 people, almost 446,000 are full-time roles and the remainder are part-time positions.

Two Government departments together account for more than a third of the total headcount: the Department for Work & Pensions (97,250, or 17.5% of the total) and the Ministry of Justice (96,715, or 17.4%).

The next largest are HM Revenue & Customs (72,885, or 13.1%), the Ministry of Defence (56,870, or 10.3%) and the Home Office (50,810, or 9.2%).

These five departments together account for just over two-thirds of the total headcount.