Hi everyone. This is my first ever Reddit post after being a long time lurker!
I’ve always been really curious about systems in different countries for government/public sector jobs and how the public view them. I do understand the definition differs by country, in the UK, teachers are public employees, but not ‘civil servants’, where as in Spain, I believe teachers are considered ‘civil servants’. I’m especially interested in jobs in central government offices, i.e policy, tax, administration, HR, passports and advice services.
I’m based in the UK and to be a civil servant is considered desirable and it’s competitive to get in. In terms of salary, entry level jobs (i.e admin assistants) are paid comparatively better than the private sector, but high skills jobs are known to pay less. This leads to the median salary in the sector being higher than the private sector. The civil service pension is also a major plus factor and any public job in the UK would nearly always have a pension that far outweighs anything the private sector seems to offer. Annual leave and working hours are also far more generous, although this might only be on paper for some less lucky people due to workload or staff shortages. I do know in recent years, the civil service has become a bit less of a great place to work, but it’s still considered somewhat prestigious and the recruitment is competitive for most jobs.
I have family that are naturalised in Spain, so I have a good understanding of society there. I understand that to be a ‘funcionario’ is insanely desirable, as job security is second to none and the salaries are supposedly better than average. In the UK, despite the civil service being somewhat prestigious and well-respected, it’s not an overwhelming amount of people that would go for it over the range of private sector jobs available, whereas, being a funcionario in Spain is insanely competitive, with people studying for years to pass the ‘oposiciones’ – the standardised exam to get public jobs in Spain and it’s just insanely competitive and hard to pass. (In the UK, it’s usually just an application form and interview, but it still takes a lot of effort compared to other recruitment processes).
So basically, I’d be interested to hear about the civil service/government jobs in YOUR countries… especially in comparison to the private sector.
Is it respected? What are the working conditions like? What are the salaries like? Is it competitive? How do they recruit? Let me know if there’s anything that might be interesting about it.
This is potentially a bit of a niche interest that others might not understand haha… I hope the post doesn’t seem too rambling…