Guernsey · The Size of the State · 2015–2025
The States’ pay bill, against RPI.
Core-government payroll rose 64.3% over the decade against 42.9% inflation — but the excess is headcount, not pay per head.
Where this ends up
The same growth, carried forward ten years, measured against something the island already knows the size of.
Run the pay bill on at the rate it has actually grown, and by 2035core government’s committee payroll reaches £542.8m on the slower ten-year rate, or £668.3m on the faster five-year one. That is an extra £212.5m to £338m a year, every year, on top of what is already being spent.
Those are big numbers without a yardstick, so here is one. In 2025 every penny of income tax collected in Guernsey — personal and corporate, the whole year, the largest single thing the States raises — came to £527.6m. On the slower of the two trends the pay bill for core government committees alone passes that figure in 2034. On the faster one it passes it in 2031. Not total States spending, not the health service, not benefits: the wage bill for one part of government, on its own, overtaking the entire income tax take of today.
The second yardstick is the one currently being argued about. GST-plus is designed to deliver a net £50m a year. The projected increase in the pay bill between now and 2035 is 4.2× to 6.8× that package — so on this path the growth in what the States pays its own staff absorbs several times over what the new tax is meant to bring in.
Headcount is the engine, as it has been all decade. At its own 2015–2025 growth rate, 2025’s 5,230 FTE becomes about 6,205 by 2035, and nearer 6,482 on the five-year rate.
Read this as a trajectory, not a prediction. It is a straight extrapolation of past growth and nothing else: no pay settlement, demographic shift, policy decision or economic shock is modelled, and the further right you read, the less it is worth. Its only claim is about the present — that the current path, continued, arrives somewhere the island would not choose. Every year the outturn lands below these lines is a year a decision was taken.
Payroll growth, 2015–2025
+64.3%
vs +42.9% RPI
2025 gap vs RPI-only
£43.1m
one year alone
Cumulative gap, decade
£152m
2015–2025, summed
Pay per FTE growth
+38.5%
below RPI (+42.9%)
FTE growth
+822
+18.6%, the whole excess
States of Guernsey Accounts, “Pay Costs & FTE” appendix, 2016 and 2018–2025 editions — gov.gg/accounts. RPI: States of Guernsey RPI series, December year-on-year — gov.gg/rpi.
Reading the gap
It’s headcount, not pay awards
The finding that changes the argument for an RPI-linked pay cap.
Payroll rose 64.3% over the decade against RPI of 42.9% — on its own, that reads as pay running well ahead of inflation. But split the pay bill into its two components and the picture inverts: pay per FTE rose only 38.5%, below RPI. The average States post got marginally cheaper in real terms over the decade. The entire excess is volume — 822 more FTE, up 18.6%.
That matters for how any pay-restraint policy gets framed. An RPI cap on the total pay bill, sold as a check on generous pay awards, would in practice have been a cap on headcount — because headcount, not the pay rate, is what has actually driven the bill above inflation. The £152m cumulative gap over the decade is close to the £43.6m operating deficit Core Government ran in 2024 (the fairer year to test against, since 2025 was flattered by one-off corporate tax and Pillar 2 receipts) — worth knowing before framing this as a story about pay rather than staffing.
Caveat: the pay-per-head split is the softer of the two numbers here, given the IPSAS 39 pension-cost change, group pension costs falling from £29.4m to £21.9m in 2025, and 53 FTE moving off agency onto contracted hours in the same year — any of which nudges the per-head figure without reflecting an actual pay decision. The total pay bill, and the £152m cumulative gap, is the robust figure.
Public sector
Sickness absence across the public service
How many sick days the States of Guernsey's workforce takes, how much of that is long-term, and how much traces back to stress - drawn from a Rule 14 written question that has never been published as a standalone report.
Total sick days, States of Guernsey public service
Only two data points exist - the underlying answer gives no intervening years. The UK private sector averages 4 days per employee a year, per ONS figures Deputy Cameron cited alongside these questions.
Stress as a share of sickness absence
Figures are approximate, as reported to Guernsey Press by the Policy & Resources Committee, and the two categories are not mutually exclusive with other absence causes.
More than 50% of all sickness absence is long-term (over four consecutive weeks). At the end of 2025 there were 117 employees across the whole public service on long-term sickness absence, averaging 60 days each. Deputy Cameron put the total annual cost of sickness absence at approximately £16.75m.
Yardsticks
Is that a lot?
The same decade, measured against the UK state, the UK private sector and Guernsey's own labour market.
Against the UK state, unremarkable
Core government added 18.6% to its headcount over the decade. UK general government, the closest match in scope because it also excludes the trading and controlled entities, added 16.5%. The two lines sit almost on top of each other. The UK Civil Service, the part of the British state that gets argued about, grew 31.9%, nearly twice as fast as Guernsey.
What holds the UK total down is a tier Guernsey does not have. Local government shed 9.4% of its posts while Whitehall added 33.5%. Guernsey has no council layer to squeeze, so nothing offsets the growth in the centre.
Against the economy paying for it, not unremarkable
The number of people working in Guernsey rose 7.1% between June 2015 and June 2024, against 18.6% for States posts. The UK private sector managed 8.8% over the same decade. Whichever side of the comparison you take, the state grew roughly twice as fast as the workforce carrying it.
That island figure is the generous reading. The employment series steps 4.5% between June 2015 and June 2016, a jump no other year comes near and one the bulletin does not explain as growth. Based from 2016 instead, island employment rose 2.5%, and the gap is wider still.
The largest employer on the island
Public administration accounted for 5,937of the island’s 33,425 employment roles in June 2024, or 17.8%, putting the States ahead of the entire finance industry on 17.2%. Over the five years to June 2024 public administration grew 6.6% while finance shrank 9.6% and wholesale and retail 10.6%.
As a share of all employment that is close to the UK, where the public sector is 17.3% of the workforce. Guernsey’s state is not unusually large. It is growing against a private sector that is not.
Where the hiring went, both sides
Guernsey’s decade of hiring matches the UK’s on health and inverts it everywhere else. Both states hired doctors and nurses faster than anything else. Only one of them kept its administrative headcount close to flat, and it was not the UK.
Categories are matched, not identical. Guernsey’s established staff is the nearest thing the island has to a civil service but is defined more widely, and its uniformed line carries prison, fire and border officers the UK police figure does not. Growth rates are compared, never levels.
And the same story in pay
Between 2015 and 2024 pay per States FTE rose 34.2%. Island median earnings rose 39.4% and RPI 38.2%. The average States post has got cheaper in real terms and has fallen behind the island’s own median wage, which is the same finding the pay-versus-RPI split gives and the reason this is a headcount question rather than a pay-award one.
The States figure is a mean, pay bill divided by FTE. The island figure is a median. The levels are not comparable and are not compared. Only the growth rates are.
ONS, "Public sector employment, UK: March 2026" reference tables (Tables 3, 4 and 5), June figures; States of Guernsey Data & Analysis, Guernsey Quarterly Population, Employment and Earnings Bulletin (issued 29 October 2024) and supplementary data; States of Guernsey Accounts, staff by pay group (2016 note 7, 2025 note 6c). UK figures are June of each year on a single ONS release, so they will differ from Civil Service Statistics figures quoted at 31 March. Island employment and earnings stop at June 2024, the latest published.