Just before the arrival of the Easter weekend, Ontario released its annual public sector salary disclosure list. The 2023 edition of the list saw a total of just over 300,000 individuals on the list earning a total salary amount of $38.2 billion for an average salary of $126,941. What is interesting is looking at the long-term evolution of the list from its debut under the Harris government in 1996 to the present. The list was instituted during Premier Harris’s Common-Sense revolution as a mechanism to essentially provide accountability for public sector salaries and spending and hopefully restrain their future growth. Any public sector worker with a salary of $100,000 or more is on the list and that nominal salary bar has been the same since 1996. If the salary threshold has been adjusted for inflation using the CPI since 1996 – the all-Item CPI has increased by about 85 percent since 1996 – the threshold today would be about $185,000.
Figure 1 presents the total number of employees on the Ontario public sector disclosure list at five key points: the debut under Premier Mike Harris in 1996, the total at the end of the Eves era (which could really be called the Harris-Eves era given Eves was only premier over the 2002 to 2003 period), the end of the McGuinty premiership in 2013, the end of the Wynne era in 2018 and the current release for 2023 at the end of just over half a decade of Premier Ford. Figure 2 presents the total salaries earned by those on the list at the same points in time as Figure 1.
In the first release of the list in 19967, there 4,501 public sector workers on the list earning a total of 546.8 million dollars for an average salary of $121,495. By the end of the Common-Sense Revolution era, the number of employees on the list and total earnings had nearly quadrupled at 20,368 employees and $2.6 billion respectively. After the tenure of Premier McGuinty a decade later in 2013, the number of list members had grown to nearly 98,000 for a salary total of $12.5 billion. Between the departure of Premier McGuinty and the departure of Premier Wynne, the list grew yet again to reach just over 151,000 employees and $19.3 billion in salary spending. Since the end of the Wynne premiership, the number of employees on the list has nearly doubled to just over 300,000 and an accompanying total salary bill of $38.1 billion.
The growth in the public sector wage bill at least as represented by the public sector disclosure list has been driven more by quantity than by price. In 1996, the average salary earned by those on the list was $121,495 whereas by 2023, that average had grown to only to only $126,941 – a nominal increase of under 5 percent and well below the overall rate of price increase. Essentially, $100,000 today has about half the purchasing power in had in 1996. The number of people on the list, however, grew from approximately 4500 to just over 300,000. It may be time to look at updating this metric to consider both changes in the overall size of broader public sector employment as well as the effects of inflation on thresholds if one is to draw meaningful comparisons.