Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

Considering quite how many jobs this covers I'm not seeing a huge issue.
They provide the conditions to allow the profitable tax paying private industries to do their thing.

I mean 20%ish levels of course.
The gulf states are just silly.

[HVC]

Truthfully I don't know. It's just my very uninformed knee jerk reaction. Three people paying for one seems inefficient (and probably expensive ).

[Sheilbh]

Speaking of civil service one in four Canadian employees now work for the government. That seems  excessive.

What'd be a reasonable percentage?

For comparison, a quick google gives the following percentages for other countries:

US ~15%
UK ~17%
Denmark ~35%
Oman ~79%
France ~21%

Looking at the wikipedia page (with different, possibly outdated numbers) plenty of countries have a higher percentage than Canada.

On the UK number, I know that decentralisation is to me what electoral reform is to Jos - but a key part of that story:


It's from 2021 - and central government added another 130,000 new staff that year. Local government continued to decline.

Wonder if this has anything to do with London getting investment, say, for more and better public transport while Northern Rail has had its promised electrification (which is comparatively cheap) delayed every for ten years

[crazy canuck]

Speaking of civil service one in four Canadian employees now work for the government. That seems  excessive.

What'd be a reasonable percentage?

For comparison, a quick google gives the following percentages for other countries:

US ~15%
UK ~17%
Denmark ~35%
Oman ~79%
France ~21%

Looking at the wikipedia page (with different, possibly outdated numbers) plenty of countries have a higher percentage than Canada.

Sheilbh stole my thunder to some extent, but Jacob you need to go a bit deeper than just a cross the board comparison.  You need to look at the responsibilities of the Federal government in each of those countries.  Most of the heavy lifting in Canada is done by the Provinces.  So what are all those Federal employees doing?

It is pretty damning to see countries like the UK and the US, where the Federal government does much more than Canada, have a lower percentage. Also damning is that the Federal government has grown dramatically faster than the Provincial work force (the folks that actually do that work of providing services).

Coincidentally, The Globe put out an editorial about this today:

The growing need to prune the federal civil service

There are two economies in Canada right now. In one, employment rebounded smartly after the pandemic maelstrom in the spring of 2020, recovering lost jobs by September of that year. In the other, it took until November, 2021 to rebound.

In one, the number of jobs has jumped by 18 per cent between February, 2020, and last month. In the other, the number of employees has risen by a third of that amount, just 6 per cent.

That first economy is the public sector; the second is the one that has to pay for the rapid expansion of the first – the private sector. The most recent data from the Labour Force Survey from Statistics Canada underscore the outsized growth in the number of public sector employees, particularly since the onset of the pandemic.

In July, the number of employees in the private sector (a measure that does not include the self-employed) fell by 42,000 from June. Public sector employment rose by nearly the same amount, 41,000, in July.

Compared with the same month last year, however, private sector employment rose by 86,000 in July. That sounds somewhat impressive – except that public sector employment surged by 205,000 over the same period. For every 10 jobs gained in the private sector, 24 jobs were added to public sector payrolls.

So who is on a hiring spree? Another set of Statscan data, the Monthly Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours – which distinguishes between levels of government – gives some insight. That survey shows that the federal government is responsible for nearly half the increase in public administration employment from 2019 to 2023, and just over two-fifths between 2015 and 2023. (The public administration category excludes such jobs as nurses or teachers, and gives a clearer picture of the relative growth of bureaucracies at various levels of government.)

There may be some trimming in order at the provincial level, but the bloat within the federal government stands out. The federal government's own measurements indicate steady increases since the Trudeau Liberals took power, with the vast majority of government departments expanding. (The pruning that the Liberals proposed in the spring budget will reverse only a small fraction of that expansion.)

Unsurprisingly, Ottawa's personnel costs have skyrocketed, rising from $27.5-billion in fiscal 2017 to $37.4-billion in fiscal 2022, according to a 2023 report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. That same report points out that compensation per employee rose an average of 3.3 per cent in fiscal 2021 and 2022, much higher than the historical average of 2 per cent between fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2020. The uptick in compensation predates most of the inflationary spike in 2022 and 2023 – and the wage settlements that followed in its wake.

It's an obvious point, but one still worth making: that pattern is not sustainable, neither fiscally nor politically. The private sector has to generate the wealth to fund all those new hires in the public sector.

Long before that golden goose is cooked, however, there will be political heat over bureaucracies growing relative to the private sector. "That's not a healthy combination," Donald Savoie, Canada Research Chair in public administration and governance at the University of Moncton, said in an interview.

Prof. Savoie says there is already frustration among Canadians, creating the danger that a future government may simply take an indiscriminate hatchet to the federal civil service. That would be a mistake, he says, and a missed opportunity to rethink the role of the federal bureaucracy. He lays out a framework in his book to be released next month, Speaking Truth to Canadians About Their Public Service.

There is no doubt that the federal bureaucracy can be cut, he says, and well within the mandate of the next government. Such reductions need not mean a degradation of service levels. Prof. Savoie says a leaner civil service, with fewer management layers, could be more responsive, better able to make use of technology – and perhaps even see a boost in morale.

That trifecta of happy outcomes won't be easy to achieve, and will require a clear strategy and no small amount of political steel to face down public service unions. But it is a fight worth having, not just to free up fiscal capacity but to ultimately create a more focused and effective public service.

[Jacob]

I addressed the issue at the level HVC brought it up at

Obviously you need to look at what the details of what kind of employees the government has and what they do to figure out if you're getting value for money.

[crazy canuck]

I addressed the issue at the level HVC brought it up at

Obviously you need to look at what the details of what kind of employees the government has and what they do to figure out if you're getting value for money.

the level he brought it up is valid.  It is crazy how much bloat we now have in the Federal civil service.  You were the one who tried to normalize it by making the comparison you posted. 

[Sheilbh]

So the civil service in the UK is about 500,000 (but that includes HMRC and prison officers because of the way they're employed) - the departmental civil service is probably around 350,000.

I'm not sure there's a "damning" or a good level. There are choices.

In the UK about 2 million of the "centrally" employed are the NHS. On the local level that's actually the level that is responsible for delivery in all sorts of areas - but they're not really allowed to decide what their goal is, how to implement it (broadly) or how to fund it which I think is a problem But Brits hate the idea of people in different areas getting different levels of services which I think is a pretty huge obstacle for decentralisation even if I think it would be a very good idea. The public hate a "postcode lottery".

[HVC]

Doesn't that happen anyway, given that the good medical staff don't want to work in the boonies? Kind of self selecting for the least competent staff? Or is the UK small enough that it doesn't matter?

[Sheilbh]

Doesn't that happen anyway, given that the good medical staff don't want to work in the boonies? Kind of self selecting for the least competent staff? Or is the UK small enough that it doesn't matter?

It absolutely does - and the public hate it

Although I think the boonies stuff is rarer because large chunks of the UK are fairly small and densely populated. There are some specific issues with islands and the Highlands generally. But there's other factors.

[Jacob]

the level he brought it up is valid.  It is crazy how much bloat we now have in the Federal civil service.  You were the one who tried to normalize it by making the comparison you posted. 

I did not try to normalize it. The number 25% does not by itself indicate whether it's too little or too much for Canada, and I didn't have enough context to judge. Neither did HVC by his own words.

You brought additional context, which I appreciate.

One thing which is not clear is whether the 25% number reflects all government employees (federal, provincial, municipal, band, and whatever other levels we have). You article seems to imply that the 25% represents all government levels of government, and that federal government hiring is responsible for about half the increase.

[crazy canuck]

So the civil service in the UK is about 500,000 (but that includes HMRC and prison officers because of the way they're employed) - the departmental civil service is probably around 350,000.

I'm not sure there's a "damning" or a good level. There are choices.

In the UK about 2 million of the "centrally" employed are the NHS. On the local level that's actually the level that is responsible for delivery in all sorts of areas - but they're not really allowed to decide what their goal is, how to implement it (broadly) or how to fund it which I think is a problem But Brits hate the idea of people in different areas getting different levels of services which I think is a pretty huge obstacle for decentralisation even if I think it would be a very good idea. The public hate a "postcode lottery".

It's interesting we went with decentralization in this province because of the concern that the outer regions were not being dealt with appropriately.  So now we have regional health authorities, regional school districts etc.   

[Jacob]

Whatever the case may be re: bloat we're going to see cuts under the upcoming Poilievre government; I expect it will primarily result in a reduction of service quality for Canadians and disproportionally hit the less well off.

But we'll see.

[crazy canuck]

the level he brought it up is valid.  It is crazy how much bloat we now have in the Federal civil service.  You were the one who tried to normalize it by making the comparison you posted. 

The number 25% does not by itself indicate whether it's too little or too much for Canada, and I didn't have enough context to judge.

Well, come on.  You know that Canada is a Federal state in which the Provinces carry out the services.  Didn't you wonder what all those Federal employees were doing?

[crazy canuck]

Whatever the case may be re: bloat we're going to see cuts under the upcoming Poilievre government; I expect it will primarily result in a reduction of service quality for Canadians and disproportionally hit the less well off.

But we'll see.

But how would a reduction of Federal employees cause a reduction of service quality for Canadians.  The Federal government provides very few services for Canadians.

Did you read the article I pasted?

[Sheilbh]

It's interesting we went with decentralization in this province because of the concern that the outer regions were not being dealt with appropriately.  So now we have regional health authorities, regional school districts etc. 

Yeah. In the UK the building blocks of the welfare state were local and inter-war and in many ways I think the story of the post-war era has been less about building or strengthening the welfare state but nationalising it - and in part that was driven by the exact same concern of how to achieve equal results. (Edit: Obviously in part it was also an outgrowth of the war effort - a national effort - and the Labour fear that poor communities would get a poor service if it was allowed to continue at a local level - a lot of the Labour leaders of the 1945 government cut their teeth in powerful local government that really pioneered the welfare state.)

Education is an interesting recent example because it was administered by local authorities. The big trend of reforms under Blair - and then carried on by Gove - in England was basically centralising decentralisation.

Schools were given a lot more authority to run themselves and decide how to use their own budgets (they could also form groups, or "takeover" other schools that were performing less well) by being removed from local authority control. So the schools have lots more power but are basically directly "administered" by the DfE in London. (I think universities would also count as "central" employees but all arm's length bodies too and I'm not 100% sure).

I don't think it's a model for everything (and I think there are problems with it) and my preference would be decentralisation. But education has been a big success in England in the last 20 years at least in part because of those reforms. And as someone who supports decentralisation it's a little uncomfortable

I think part of it is it also depends at what level politics "works" which can change over time - I think British people politically "think" nationally (because that's what they've been taught to an extent) rather than about their council. Plus there's been a lot of reform and fluctuations of power at local level so it's not been a stable thing. It's not for nothing that basically every think tank of men like me (and maybe Jos) ultimately ends up "solving" politics by re-drawing the map of local government