Federal bureaucrats cost taxpayers an average of $143,271 each in pay and benefits last year, as total personnel spending climbed into the tens of billions and the size of the public service continued to swell, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office.Blacklock's Reporter says the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported total compensation per full-time equivalent employee rose 5.1% from $136,345 to $143,271, marking a second consecutive year of what analysts described as “historically high” growth in spending per employee. The increase was largely driven by a 4.8% jump in salaries.The report counted 447,859 federal employees last year — a 31% increase from the 2015 payroll of 342,129 workers. “The size of the public service continued to grow,” analysts wrote.In 2024-25, total personnel spending reached $76.3 billion, up from $71.9 billion the previous year — a 6% increase. The total includes $2.4 billion in payroll costs at Crown corporations, according to the Personnel Expenditures Analysis Tool Update.Expenses covered salaries and wages, pension compensation, overtime, bilingual bonuses and other employee-related benefits. The Budget Office said overall departmental personnel spending — excluding one-time payments — is largely driven by two factors: the number of federal employees and average spending per worker.The figures include members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but exclude active members of the Canadian Armed Forces. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat has estimated total annual payroll, including the military and retired public servants, at $84.9 billion.Annual pension payments averaged $37,026 per retiree, according to a 2024 Treasury Board briefing book, which noted the core public administration has grown consistently between 2017 and 2023..In testimony before the House of Commons government operations committee in 2024, then-parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux suggested rising costs are partly the result of multiple layers of management within departments.“It is not uncommon for departments to have five levels of executives and associate deputy ministers or more and one deputy minister,” Giroux told MPs.“It leads to a situation where an employee can have seven levels of management above them.”Giroux said there is “certainly room” for what some call “de-layering” within the public service and acknowledged that executive ranks could be trimmed.“Over time we are seeing an increase in the number of public servants in public expenditures, but year after year, despite the fact departments choose their performance indicators and the targets, they don’t seem to be getting significantly better,” he said. “That is what worries me with the increased level of spending.”
