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 2035 core 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 5,937 of 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.
Government
Size of the public sector
Employment share, headcount and cost of the States of Guernsey.
5,154 FTE
States of Guernsey “Core” staffing, 2024 (up from 5,058 in 2023, +1.9% — 70% of the increase was in Health). +374 FTE over the past 5 years, 341 of which in health/social care.
£317.6m pay bill
2024, up from £293m in 2023. States Accounts 2024 also cites a structural annual deficit of roughly £56m.
8.2–8.4% of population
Work in the public sector (~5,300 FTE posts) — smaller than Jersey (~9.5%) or the UK (~8.9%).
18% of the workforce
A different cut — government as a share of jobs, not population — put government at 18% of Guernsey’s workforce against 17% for finance, per the BBC. Not directly comparable to the population-share figure to the left, but the starker of the two.
10% of GDP
“Public administration and defence; compulsory social security and trading bodies” sector GVA: £281m (2018) → £351m (2023).
FTE staffing and pay bill: States Accounts 2024 (published 23 Jun 2025, gov.gg/accounts2024). Workforce-share comparator (18% government vs. 17% finance): cited by the BBC and referenced in Will Walter’s “Make Guernsey Great Again” insight (Dec 2024) — a workforce-share measure, not the population-share measure used elsewhere on this page, so the two numbers are not directly comparable. Public sector share of population and the Jersey/UK comparators: Bailiwick Express, “FACT CHECKED: Is Guernsey’s public sector really ‘small compared to anywhere else’?” (citing published States/Jersey/UK data). Public-sector GVA share of GDP: GVA/GDP Bulletin 2023, Table 3.1.1, gov.gg/gdp.
Net revenue expenditure as a share of GDP
Bridgehead’s own calculation — States of Guernsey “Net Revenue Expenditure” (Segmental Analysis, States Accounts 2013/2016/2018/2020/2022/2023, gov.gg/accounts) divided by nominal GDP for the same year (Table 2.1.1, GVA/GDP Bulletin, above). This is not an officially published ratio — no States of Guernsey source states total spending as a percentage of GDP directly. 2014 is omitted rather than estimated: no comparable figure was sourced for that year. 2020 and 2021 exclude a separately-reported COVID-19 support line (£51.257m and £22.434m); including it takes the ratio to 17.5% and 15.9% respectively. 2024 and 2025 are not shown: that year’s Accounts redesigned this statement to break Alderney and Transferred Services out separately, so the headline figures (£610.0m, £641.6m) aren’t on the same basis as 2013–2023, and no 2024/2025 GDP estimate has been published yet to divide them by. The dashed reference line is the States’ own Fiscal Policy Framework Principle 5 ceiling — “the aggregate amount of States’ revenue should not exceed 24% of GDP” — which is a revenue ceiling, not a spending target, and is shown only for scale, not as a like-for-like comparator.
Public finances
Revenue and expenditure in today’s money, 2009–2025
What the States has raised and spent each year, restated in constant 2025 prices so that a rising line means more money in real terms, not just higher prices.
Read before comparing years
Capital is measured three ways. 2009–2017 is routine capital charged to General Revenue; 2018–2021 is total capital spend, mostly drawn from the Capital Reserve; 2022–2025 is group additions to property, plant and equipment, because the accounts no longer report a capital line for General Revenue. The current-plus-capital line therefore steps up at each break and is not like for like across them. 2025 revenue includes a one-off £34.2m of income tax relating to earlier years, mostly from the banking sector. 2022 revenue is the restated figure (£554.4m nominal); the first-published £481.7m included an investment loss. Current expenditure is net of committee income and includes COVID support in 2020–23.
States of Guernsey Accounts 2009-2025 and Budget 2025 (Approved), gov.gg/accounts; deflated with Guernsey RPI, States of Guernsey Data & Analysis, gov.gg/rpi. Real values are Bridgehead’s own calculation: each year’s nominal figure multiplied by the ratio of the 2025 to that year’s Guernsey RPI (annual average of the four quarterly indices). Deflating on a different index, such as UK RPI, changes the early years noticeably.
Borrowing
What the States owes
What the States of Guernsey group owed at the end of 2025, from the borrowings note of its audited accounts: the public bond, revolving credit facilities and bank loans.
£403.5m owed by the group
The public bond (£319.3m at carrying value), revolving credit drawn by the Housing Association and Guernsey Electricity (£47.0m) and bank loans (£37.2m). Against 2023 GDP, the latest published, that is 11.6%. The fiscal framework sets a ceiling of 15%.
£155m of the bond is owed by General Revenue
General Revenue, the States’ own account, borrowed up to £160m of the bond in 2021 to part-fund the capital portfolio. It owed £155.0m at the end of 2025 and £140.0m a year earlier, repayable in 2046. Across all borrowers, £311.4m of bond loans were outstanding.
Nothing drawn on the States’ own facility
The States’ £100m revolving credit facility with Lloyds, agreed in 2022 and extended to March 2027, had nothing drawn at the end of 2025 (£10m a year earlier). It replaced a £225m facility agreed in 2020 for the COVID-19 response, which closed in 2022 with every balance repaid.
Group borrowings by type, end of year (£m)
| Type | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public bond (carrying value) | 318.3 | 318.6 | 318.9 | 319.3 |
| Revolving credit drawn | 51.5 | 57.5 | 44.0 | 47.0 |
| Bank loans | 49.4 | 45.4 | 41.3 | 37.2 |
| Total | 419.1 | 421.5 | 404.3 | 403.5 |
At the end of 2025 the revolving credit was £17.5m for the Guernsey Housing Association and £29.5m for Guernsey Electricity. A year earlier it was £6.5m and £27.5m, plus £10m drawn by the States itself.
“Group” means everything in the States’ consolidated accounts: the States’ core, the trading bodies and the Guernsey Housing Association. Loans between group members are eliminated on consolidation, so the bond is counted once. It is carried at amortised cost (£319.3m at the end of 2025), below its £330m face value, and the carrying value rises towards £330m by repayment in 2046. The share of GDP is Bridgehead’s own calculation on 2023 nominal GDP of £3,488m, the latest Guernsey has published; the framework’s own definition of total debt may differ from the group figure. The 2022 and 2023 columns come from the 2024 accounts and the 2024 and 2025 columns from the 2025 accounts. States of Guernsey Group Consolidated Financial Statements 2025, note 28 (Borrowings), note 41.4.2 (Liquidity Risk) and Appendix IV (States bond loans); States of Guernsey Group Consolidated Financial Statements 2024 (P.2025/99), note 27 (Borrowings), for the 2022 and 2023 comparatives; States of Guernsey Accounts 2022 (P.2023/70), note 17 (Revolving Credit Facility), on the end of the 2020 syndicated facility; States of Guernsey, Fiscal Policy Framework, Principle 7 (total debt not above 15% of GDP).
Reserves
The States’ investment funds
How the States' two main investment funds - the General Investment Portfolio and the Public Servants' Pension Scheme - have performed against their benchmarks, after a deputy put the shortfall in money terms and Policy & Resources ruled out an independent review.
£312m behind the market
Deputy Jennifer Strachan’s estimate of how far the two funds together trailed their market (policy) benchmark over 2023–2025. She put it in money terms “so the magnitude of the issue was clear”; P&R judges performance in percentage rather than sterling terms but did not dispute her arithmetic.
£85m behind the target
Her estimate of the shortfall against the funds’ long-term target of inflation plus 5% over the same three years. She says the pattern has held across the four and a half years since the States Investment Board structure was put in place.
Three-year annualised return vs the policy benchmark
P&R accepted the underperformance against this benchmark was “more pronounced”, attributing it chiefly to illiquid legacy investments that cannot readily be sold, weak returns from some active equity managers and, in the general portfolio, inherited mandates and the Guernsey Investment Fund.
On the long-term target, P&R says the funds are now broadly on track. Measured cumulatively since the start of 2023 to the end of June 2026, the pension scheme had returned 34.07% and the general portfolio 31.06%, against 32.83% for the inflation plus 5% target. The committee argues the target should not be judged over just three years, said there was “no evidence of significant or consistent underperformance” against it, and declined to set any sterling loss that would automatically trigger an independent review, calling that “unduly simplistic”.
The two sterling figures (£312m and £85m) are Deputy Strachan’s own estimates, expressed in money terms; P&R did not dispute her calculations but assesses the funds in percentage terms. The percentage returns and benchmarks are P&R’s own figures, given in response to her written questions. The States Investment Board, a politically independent body of investment professionals, has overseen the funds since early 2022 and appointed Cambridge Associates as investment advisers in August 2022. Guernsey Press, “States’ funds ‘losing millions’ as they miss market targets” (8 September 2026), reporting Deputy Jennifer Strachan’s written questions and the Policy & Resources Committee’s response.
Budget 2027
The 2027 Budget: options, savings and trading entities
Published 6 October 2026. Two expenditure budgets, a £47m recurring funding gap and £33m of unmet committee demand.
Option A: 1% real-terms cut
Honours the Assembly’s existing resolution. Gives a £4.2m surplus before investment returns. Committees must find further savings or service reductions. Five of the sixteen committees met the 1% savings target in their submissions.
Option B: 1.3% real-terms rise
Adds £15.7m of committee spending, about half the £33m by which committee requests exceeded the Option A limit. Turns the surplus into a £11.5m deficit before investment returns.
Spend-to-Save
£5m from unallocated routine capital plus £1m from the Budget Reserve, for upfront investment that is intended to deliver recurring savings. Priority-based budgeting continues to be rolled out.
The three committees cut hardest under Option A
- States' Trading Supervisory Board: -15.2% under Option A, -15.2% under Option B against the authorised 2026 budget of £1.9m.
- Economic Development: -9.1% under Option A, -6% under Option B against the authorised 2026 budget of £12.7m.
- Development & Planning Authority: -5.6% under Option A, -5.6% under Option B against the authorised 2026 budget of £1.4m.
Trading entities outside the headline surplus
The unincorporated trading entities carry a combined £198k deficit in 2027, with only Guernsey Water and States Works paying their own way. Aurigny carries a £5.7m impairment on top, outside General Revenue and outside the £4.2m surplus.
A "Budget for growth"… that cuts Economic Development
The report is titled a “Budget for growth”. Under Option A, Economic Development falls -9.1% in cash terms (£11.6m, from £12.7m), the deepest departmental cut after the States’ Trading Supervisory Board at -15.2%. The £5m Growth Fund sits elsewhere, outside the Econ Dev cash limit, drawn from Pillar 2 revenue.
Overseas Aid: the biggest cash-limit rise
£6.2m under Option A, up 10.6% from £5.6m in 2026 and 11.4% under Option B. Honours the Assembly resolution to move Overseas Aid towards 0.4% of GDP; the largest percentage rise of any committee under either option.
The silent £17.3m
Committees asked for £33m above the Option A ceiling. Option B accepts £15.7m of that, with Table 11 showing where it goes committee by committee. The remaining £17.3m is not itemised anywhere in the Budget pack: readers cannot see which services each committee said it would stop providing to meet an Option A limit it says it cannot meet.
Exec summary of the Budget 2027 report, para 1. The dedicated page carries the committee-by-committee breakdown of the £15.7m that is itemised.