Public employment

🏛️ Public employment

Who works for Spain's public administrations: how many there are, in which administration and which services, where, what they earn and how much they cost.

Where do they work?

Almost half of public employment is in healthcare and non-university education, which the autonomous communities have managed since the transfers of powers between the 1980s and 2002. Central government mainly retains the Armed Forces, the National Police, the Guardia Civil, the Tax Agency, prisons and ministry services.

31% are interim civil servants (interinos) or temporary contract staff. Career civil servant (funcionario de carrera): holds a permanent post after passing a competitive exam (oposición). Interim: fills a vacant post or covers a replacement. Contract staff (laboral): employed under an employment contract (permanent or temporary). In healthcare, statutory staff of the health services are counted as civil servants.

How many are there per inhabitant in each region?

By the region where the job is located. Ceuta and Melilla stand out because of the military and police stationed there, and Madrid because of the ministries' central services. Where a region provides services through contracted providers, consortia or public companies (much of healthcare in Catalonia, for example), those staff do not appear in the register and the rate comes out lower. Click on a region to see its provinces.

How has it changed?

Note the jump between July 2022 and January 2023 (~+240,000): in August 2026 the Ministry revised every edition since 2023 using new sources and classifications (especially in the autonomous communities), so part of the increase is methodological, not new hiring. Data before July 2019 are not published in open format.

The Labour Force Survey (EPA) provides a longer series (quarterly since 2002) and also counts public companies and institutions, but it is a survey: that is why it shows more public employees than the register (around 3.6 million) and its quarterly figure has a margin of error. It shows the cuts of 2011-2014 (from 3.28 to 2.93 million on an annual average, during the debt crisis) and the subsequent growth, faster since 2018.

What do they earn?

Within each decile (each band of 10% of employees ranked by wage), the public and private sectors earn practically the same, and in the top decile the private sector earns more. The average gap comes from composition: there are proportionally many more public employees in the upper bands (doctors, teachers, university graduates, longer service) and almost none in the lowest-paid private-sector jobs (hospitality, retail, agriculture). Gross monthly wage from the main full-time job, before taxes and employee social contributions.

Average gross annual wage in 2022 according to the INE's four-yearly Structure of Earnings Survey, by region of the workplace and by whether the company or body is publicly or privately controlled. It only covers those contributing to the General Social Security Scheme: it leaves out civil servants covered by mutual funds (MUFACE, ISFAS, MUGEJU).

How much do they cost?

Per inhabitant and in constant euros, so that the trend does not merely reflect population and price growth. Compensation of general government employees (national accounts, Eurostat): wages and salaries plus the social contributions paid by the administration as employer. Transfers between administrations are not counted twice: each one pays its own staff.

Staff spending by each region and its town councils (2024, 2025 euros)

Chapter 1 ("staff costs") of the outturn accounts: the region's figure from the Ministry of Finance; the town councils' figure is the sum of those that submitted their outturn accounts to the Ministry (CONPREL), per inhabitant of those municipalities. The Basque Country and Navarre collect their own taxes (the foral regime) and take on more responsibilities, which raises their spending; in Álava and Navarre town councils do not appear in CONPREL. Each town council's staff spending is on its page in municipalities.

Sources and notes

• Statistical Bulletin of Personnel in the Service of Public Administrations (Central Personnel Register), Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service: staff as at 1 January and 1 July since 2019. It does not include public companies or foundations, nor does it go down to each town council (only by type of entity and province). Local authority staff figures come from Social Security registrations.
• INE – Labour Force Survey: public sector employees by administration (table 65193) and by region (65327); wages by decile (66250).
• INE – Structure of Earnings Survey 2022: annual wage by region and public or private control.
• Eurostat – gov_10a_main: compensation of employees (D1) of general government by subsector.
• Ministry of Finance: outturn accounts of the autonomous communities and local authorities (CONPREL), chapter 1.
• The three counts measure different things: the register counts people holding a post in an administration; the EPA estimates employees who say they work in the public sector (including public companies); the national accounts measure the cost.

Data updated 7 minutes ago