Jersey · The Size of the State · 1999–2025

The public payroll has grown 59%. The private sector, 28%.

Same island, same 26 years, same published return, and the two halves of Jersey’s workforce have grown at very different rates.

Public sector (core) FTE, 2025: 8,200Public sector (core) FTE, 2025
Public sector (core) FTE, 1999: 5,150Public sector (core) FTE, 1999
Public sector growth since 1999: 59%Public sector growth since 1999
Private sector growth since 1999: 28%Private sector growth since 1999

Axis starts at 80, not zero

Both series indexed to their own 1999 level, so two very different headcounts can be compared as growth rather than as size. December returns only, because Jersey’s labour market has a large summer swing and the June return catches it near its peak, so December-against-December holds the season constant. “Public sector (core)” is States of Jersey departments, the series that runs the full length. A wider public-sector total including trading operations and other public bodies has been published since 2013 and reached 9,190 in 2025; it is not back-filled before its first publication, and is not what this chart plots. The public sector was 11.6% of all FTEs in 1999 and 13.8% in 2025. What this chart cannot tell you is whether that growth bought more service or more cost. Jersey publishes no open pay-per-head series, so unlike Guernsey’s equivalent page this one does not split growth into headcount and pay.

The raw numbers

Full-time equivalents, not indexed

The same December returns at their actual levels, 1999–2025.

Axis starts at 4,000, not zero

The wider series simply does not exist before 2013, because Statistics Jersey did not publish it, and the line begins where the data does rather than being estimated backwards. The core headcount was broadly flat through the 2010s and has risen in every year since 2016, from 5,930 to 8,200. That nine-year climb, not the 26-year total, is what the current Assembly inherited.

opendata.gov.je, "Labour market - Full-time equivalents (FTEs)" - FTE by sector since 1999 (SIC2003)

The money

Where general government spending goes

£1,788.8m across ten functions in 2024, equal to 26.1% of that year's GDP.

Social protection (£561.6m) and health (£515.7m) together account for more than half of everything Jersey’s government spends. COFOG is the international Classification of the Functions of Government, so these categories are comparable with other jurisdictions in a way departmental budget lines are not. “General government” is a wider scope than the States of Jersey departments in the headcount chart above, since it includes the social security fund. The two halves of this page are not two views of one number.

Statistics Jersey’s own summary of the same COFOG tables, rounded to whole percentage points by the source.

Only three years of COFOG data are published on this basis, so this is a short-run comparison and a single year’s capital project can dominate a small function. The total rose from £1,600.1m to £1,788.8m over the two years, which is 12% in cash terms, not adjusted for inflation, which over 2022-2024 was substantial.

opendata.gov.je, "Public spending statistics" - Areas of expenditure (percentages); opendata.gov.je, "Public spending statistics" - Detailed functional breakdown of expenditure (COFOG)