Summarised by Centrist
New data from the Public Service Commission (PSC) reveals that 45% regularly work from home (WFH) at least one day a week.
At the top of the list is the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, where 93.5% of staff work remotely between one and five days per week. Only 6.5% of employees consistently show up to the office.
Other agencies with high remote work rates include the Independent Child’s Monitor (86.2%), the Serious Fraud Office (81.8%), the Inland Revenue Department (80.2%), and the Cancer Control Agency (79.7%).
Furthermore, according to The Taxpayers’ Union, the increasingly absent public sector, per capita, is twice the size of Communist China’s bureaucracy, although Chinese government statistics and figures generally need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Even the UK, with its famously overgrown civil service, employs fewer mandarins per person than Wellington.
Meanwhile, the US, under Donald Trump, is taking a sledgehammer to remote work in the federal government. Trump has declared war on WFH in Washington, ordering all federal employees back to their offices by February 6—or face termination.
The Trump administration has also begun offering buyouts to encourage resignations, effectively shrinking the public service while clearing out employees who resist the new policy.
Trump’s broader agenda includes invalidating last-minute labour agreements made under Biden that sought to lock in remote work protections for federal employees. He has also revived “Schedule F,” a policy to make it easier to fire federal workers—particularly those perceived as obstacles to executive authority.
Read more over at The NZ Herald and publicservice.govt.nz
