UK Ministry of Defence Civil Service Workforce and Payroll Costs

UK Ministry of Defence monthly management information on staff numbers and paybill costs for Civil Service departments, agencies, and executive NDPBs. The data covers both payroll and non-payroll (contingent labour) staff, split by full-time equivalents and headcount, with payroll costs broken into components like salaries and pensions. Staffing numbers are as of month-end, while cost information is for the reference month, with a baseline from the 2014/15 financial year.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking departmental staffing levels based on Civil Service grades and full-time equivalent (FTE) counts.
• Analyzing trends in payroll costs, broken down into salaries, allowances, and employer pension contributions.
• Monitoring the scale and cost of contingent labour, including consultants and other non-payroll workers.
• Assessing government transparency and workforce management using monthly time-series data.

Strengths

• Provides a detailed breakdown of payroll costs into specific components like salaries and pensions, as described.
• Covers both payroll staff and non-payroll contingent labour, offering a comprehensive workforce view.
• Represents monthly time-series data, allowing for tracking changes over time.
• Published under the OGL-UK-3.0 license, facilitating reuse and analysis.

Limitations

• Specific column names and the total row count are not provided in the input metadata, limiting understanding of the data structure.
• The input contains conflicting 'last updated' dates (both 2026-07-08), suggesting potential metadata errors.
• The dataset's description is focused on a specific historical period (2014/15 baseline), which may limit current applicability.

Provenance

Source

Ministry of Defence (UK)

Collection Method

Internal workforce management information published for transparency, not official statistics.

Time Range

Monthly data with a baseline from the 2014/15 financial year.

Freshness

2026-07-08 13:33:01.096411

Geography

United Kingdom (specifically UK Civil Service departments, agencies, and NDPBs)