Population of the federal public service by first official language and executive level

Source of information: Pay System as of March 31 of each year.
The federal public service consists of 2 population segments: the core public administration and separate agencies.
Departments and agencies in the core public administration are named in schedules I and IV of the Financial Administration Act. The Treasury Board is the employer of this segment of the federal public service.
Separate agencies are named in Schedule V of the Act. As independent employers, represented separate agencies conduct their own negotiations (subject to the President of the Treasury Board’s approval of their mandates) and set terms and conditions of employment within their organizations. This includes establishing the organizational structure and classification of positions. Unrepresented separate agencies consult with TBS with respect to any new or modified terms and conditions of employment that are not established through the collective bargaining process, to ensure broad alignment with those in the core public administration.
Included in this information are:
- active employees of all employment tenures (indeterminate, term, casual and student)
- Governor in Council appointees
- deputy ministers
- federal judges
Excluded from this information are:
- inactive employees (i.e., employees on leave without pay)
- ministers’ exempt staff
- employees locally engaged outside of Canada
- Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Regular Force members
- RCMP Civilian members
- Canadian Armed Forces members
Population counts for the following separate agencies are not included because their employee information is not available in the Pay System:
- Canadian Security Intelligence Service
- National Capital Commission
- Canada Investment and Savings
- Canadian Forces Non-Public Funds
- Security Intelligence Review Committee (before 2010)
Data on executives in the federal public service include employees from the Executive group as well as executive equivalents within the separate agencies.
Executive equivalents in separate agencies were adjusted in 2016 and as a result, historical years have been adjusted according to this grouping and may not reflect previous figures provided in historical Demographic snapshot of Canada’s public service reports and Clerk of the Privy Council’s Annual Reports to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada.
Classification is based on the effective classification which includes acting assignments.

Population of the federal public service by first official language and executive level
First official language	Year
First official language	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026
Core public administration
English	135,552	137,471	137,046	142,781	151,264	158,611	169,327	176,332	188,921	197,455	195,070	188,957
Executives	3,377	3,463	3,412	3,541	3,736	3,911	4,267	4,570	4,829	4,874	4,939	4,785
EX-01	1,771	1,795	1,731	1,807	1,868	1,982	2,157	2,334	2,491	2,480	2,458	2,391
EX-02	816	839	858	854	921	940	1,041	1,119	1,172	1,212	1,239	1,199
EX-03	586	622	620	658	713	736	795	838	882	883	932	898
EX-04	152	148	145	156	164	177	191	204	202	214	214	191
EX-05	52	59	58	66	70	76	83	75	82	85	96	106
Non-executives	132,175	134,008	133,634	139,240	147,528	154,700	165,060	171,762	184,092	192,581	190,131	184,172
French	59,106	59,115	61,197	63,643	67,607	70,669	74,329	76,289	81,056	83,965	83,545	80,787
Executives	1,578	1,572	1,674	1,744	1,879	2,006	2,145	2,295	2,488	2,535	2,616	2,516
EX-01	847	837	911	943	1,029	1,091	1,154	1,237	1,330	1,342	1,388	1,333
EX-02	392	405	429	448	467	524	573	613	668	670	701	673
EX-03	262	246	242	248	282	292	317	343	387	407	416	400
EX-04	54	54	61	75	68	64	65	67	68	79	73	74
EX-05	23	30	31	30	33	35	36	35	35	37	38	36
Non-executives	57,528	57,543	59,523	61,899	65,728	68,663	72,184	73,994	78,568	81,430	80,929	78,271
Unknown	907	768	1,448	1,888	1,444	1,896	2,083	1,688	821	732	781	733
Executives	3	0	8	11	11	5	9	5	3	7	0	0
EX-01	2	0	2	0	3	1	4	2	2	1	0	0
EX-02	1	0	2	5	4	3	4	2	1	2	0	0
EX-03	0	0	1	3	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
EX-04	0	0	2	1	2	0	0	0	0	2	0	0
EX-05	0	0	1	2	1	1	1	1	0	2	0	0
Non-executives	904	768	1,440	1,877	1,433	1,891	2,074	1,683	818	725	781	733
Total	195,565	197,354	199,691	208,312	220,315	231,176	245,739	254,309	270,798	282,152	279,396	270,477
Separate agencies
English	46,116	46,434	47,543	49,310	51,161	52,129	55,776	61,701	65,046	63,961	57,821	54,475
Executives	912	931	984	971	1,010	1,029	1,105	1,154	1,224	1,220	1,241	1,203
EX-01	423	431	475	455	470	463	476	498	524	539	536	519
EX-02	256	272	281	295	311	318	365	370	393	393	406	398
EX-03	158	160	159	160	145	163	175	204	216	199	207	196
EX-04	42	38	38	32	49	50	54	56	60	62	64	61
EX-05	33	30	31	29	35	35	35	26	31	27	28	29
Non-executives	45,204	45,503	46,559	48,339	50,151	51,100	54,671	60,547	63,822	62,741	56,580	53,272
French	14,051	14,302	14,929	15,189	15,398	15,772	16,397	17,820	18,919	18,787	17,386	16,556
Executives	357	356	397	406	431	420	437	464	500	496	519	510
EX-01	168	166	183	183	208	204	208	225	238	223	229	216
EX-02	98	98	117	118	117	122	127	139	149	160	172	180
EX-03	60	58	62	69	67	62	61	63	75	69	76	79
EX-04	20	23	25	29	28	18	24	16	18	23	23	20
EX-05	11	11	10	7	11	14	17	21	20	21	19	15
Non-executives	13,694	13,946	14,532	14,783	14,967	15,352	15,960	17,356	18,419	18,291	16,867	16,046
Unknown	1,302	889	533	760	1,109	1,373	1,689	2,127	2,484	2,872	3,362	3,774
Executives	113	92	5	5	3	5	9	18	25	23	25	27
EX-01	61	55	1	1	0	1	0	4	8	7	7	7
EX-02	27	17	2	2	1	2	6	9	11	9	11	14
EX-03	10	10	2	2	2	2	3	2	3	3	4	4
EX-04	11	6	0	0	0	0	0	2	1	2	1	0
EX-05	4	4	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	2	2	2
Non-executives	1,189	797	528	755	1,106	1,368	1,680	2,109	2,459	2,849	3,337	3,747
Total	61,469	61,625	63,005	65,259	67,668	69,274	73,862	81,648	86,449	85,620	78,569	74,805
Federal public service
English	181,668	183,905	184,589	192,091	202,425	210,740	225,103	238,033	253,967	261,416	252,891	243,432
Executives	4,289	4,394	4,396	4,512	4,746	4,940	5,372	5,724	6,053	6,094	6,180	5,988
EX-01	2,194	2,226	2,206	2,262	2,338	2,445	2,633	2,832	3,015	3,019	2,994	2,910
EX-02	1,072	1,111	1,139	1,149	1,232	1,258	1,406	1,489	1,565	1,605	1,645	1,597
EX-03	744	782	779	818	858	899	970	1,042	1,098	1,082	1,139	1,094
EX-04	194	186	183	188	213	227	245	260	262	276	278	252
EX-05	85	89	89	95	105	111	118	101	113	112	124	135
Non-executives	177,379	179,511	180,193	187,579	197,679	205,800	219,731	232,309	247,914	255,322	246,711	237,444
French	73,157	73,417	76,126	78,832	83,005	86,441	90,726	94,109	99,975	102,752	100,931	97,343
Executives	1,935	1,928	2,071	2,150	2,310	2,426	2,582	2,759	2,988	3,031	3,135	3,026
EX-01	1,015	1,003	1,094	1,126	1,237	1,295	1,362	1,462	1,568	1,565	1,617	1,549
EX-02	490	503	546	566	584	646	700	752	817	830	873	853
EX-03	322	304	304	317	349	354	378	406	462	476	492	479
EX-04	74	77	86	104	96	82	89	83	86	102	96	94
EX-05	34	41	41	37	44	49	53	56	55	58	57	51
Non-executives	71,222	71,489	74,055	76,682	80,695	84,015	88,144	91,350	96,987	99,721	97,796	94,317
Unknown	2,209	1,657	1,981	2,648	2,553	3,269	3,772	3,815	3,305	3,604	4,143	4,507
Executives	116	92	13	16	14	10	18	23	28	30	25	27
EX-01	63	55	3	1	3	2	4	6	10	8	7	7
EX-02	28	17	4	7	5	5	10	11	12	11	11	14
EX-03	10	10	3	5	3	2	3	2	3	3	4	4
EX-04	11	6	2	1	2	0	0	2	1	4	1	0
EX-05	4	4	1	2	1	1	1	2	2	4	2	2
Non-executives	2,093	1,565	1,968	2,632	2,539	3,259	3,754	3,792	3,277	3,574	4,118	4,480
Federal public service total	257,034	258,979	262,696	273,571	287,983	300,450	319,601	335,957	357,247	367,772	357,965	345,282

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Data file	Description
Population of the federal public service by first official language and executive level	These data present population counts by first official language and executive level for the federal public service (all departments and agencies governed by the Financial Administration Act (FAA) Schedules I, IV and V) from March 31, 2010 to March 31, 2026.

Glossary of key terms

To assist you with your analysis of federal public service human resources data, we have compiled a glossary of key terms that are used in many of the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer’s (OCHRO) demographic snapshots and reports. This glossary has been developed to help provide a common language across OCHRO’s demographic snapshots and reports.

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2026-06-24

Population of the federal public service by first official language and executive level

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