Civil service at federal, states and municipalities: Development over time and differences by task area

Due to the onset of demographic change, the need for new staff is likely to increase further, while digitalization will initially require additional specialists. If it is not possible to counteract this through less complex legislation and efficiency gains, giving employees the status of a civil servant will remain as a means of attracting more staff to the public sector. Irrespective of the normative question of whether the (civil servant) workforce should grow or decline, this article examines how the proportion of civil servants - i.e. the proportion of civil servants in all public sector employees - has developed. To this end, the proportion of civil servants in the years 2012 and 2022 is compared in various functions of government. The study looks at the federal government, the federal states and the municipalities as aggregates as well as the federal states individually.

For the federal government, the results show that the proportion of civil servants has only decreased slightly by 0.5 percentage points. A significant increase can be seen in the Federal Armed Forces administration and in political leadership, while a decrease can be seen in internal administration, among others. In the federal states, the proportion of civil servants fell by 4.6 percentage points, particularly in elementary school, political management and central administration. The proportion of civil servants is higher in the old federal states than in the new ones, although some new federal states have increased their proportion of civil servants in recent years. The proportion of civil servants at local authorities has declined significantly. Between 2012 and 2022, this fell from a low level by 2.6 percentage points and thus by more than a sixth. The decline affects all municipal functions without exception, especially the areas of social affairs and youth, internal administration and security and order. One reason for this is the strong increase in personnel in daycare facilities for children, which was carried out entirely by employees. Seen across all levels, the instrument of giving employees the status of a civil servant has thus become relatively less important.