BC Public Sector Jobs Grew 3 Times Faster Than Private Hiring in Past Decade: Report

B.C.’s public sector has grown at more than three times the pace of private-sector hiring over the past decade, and nearly three times faster than the province’s population, according to a new report.

Full-time equivalent positions in B.C.’s public sector increased 54 percent in the decade up to fiscal year 2025/26, says the report from the Fraser Institute. At the same time, the population grew 19.6 percent and private sector hiring increased 16.8 percent.

In absolute numbers, full-time positions in the public sector increased in that 10-year period from 284,231 to 437,835. The full-time equivalent positions figure is based on number of hours worked rather than headcount. Two half-time positions, for example, represent one full-time equivalent position.

The increase has significantly raised provincial labour costs and added pressure to provincial finances, as B.C.’s debt is projected to reach $154.1 billion in 2025/26, more than double the debt from nine years ago, the report says.

“This has meaningful implications for the budget as taxpayers must pay for these employees’ compensation,” notes the analysis by the Fraser Institute’s Tegan Hill and Milagros Palacios.

The authors added the government “has recognized that the surge in public sector jobs has fiscal consequences and cannot be sustained indefinitely,” referring to the Eby government’s announcement of a hiring freeze at the end of 2024, focused on reducing the bureaucracy.

The report differentiates between B.C.’s broader public sector, which includes Crown corporations, health authorities, school districts and social service agencies, and the narrower core government sector jobs, which make up the provincial bureaucracy itself, including ministries, special offices, and service delivery agencies.

Core Government Growth

The report says full-time equivalent positions in the core government sector increased 48.4 percent in the decade through 2025/26.

The largest percentage increase in this category was in service delivery agencies, with a 109 percent jump during the period, according to the report. These include agencies such as B.C. Housing, B.C. Transit, Destination B.C., the B.C. Transportation Financing Authority, and B.C. Infrastructure Benefits.

Jobs at ministries and special offices increased by 37.8 percent in the same time.

The report says employee compensation generally accounts for half of all provincial spending, leading to an estimated average compensation per public sector full-time equivalent position of $124,966 in 2025/26 once adjusted for inflation.

Based on this estimate, Hill and Palacios conclude that the government’s plan to cut 2,500 full-time equivalent jobs from ministries and special offices over the coming three years would lead to roughly $312.4 million in savings per year. If ministry staffing had just kept pace with population growth, the province could have saved about $748 million per year.

The government’s broader plan to cut 15,000 public sector full-time equivalent positions will lead to savings of roughly $1.9 billion, according to the report. However, Palacios and Hill conclude that these savings would climb to $12.2 billion if positions had only kept pace with population.

The province has acknowledged the disproportionate public sector growth as fiscally unfeasible, freezing hiring in late 2024 and announcing planned cuts in its 2026 provincial budget. However, the Fraser Institute report concludes that Premier David Eby’s planned reductions are “relatively small” compared with the scale of staffing growth over the past decade.