Hospitals
Hospital workforce
The hospital workforce in Australia is large and diverse, covering many occupations. Hospital employees include medical officers (such as surgeons, anaesthetists and other specialists), nurses, diagnostic and allied health professionals (such as physiotherapists and occupational therapists), administrative and clerical staff, and domestic and other personal care staff.
This section presents information on the number of full time equivalent (FTE) staff working in public hospitals from 2019–20 to 2023–24.
This line graph shows the average full-time equivalent staff for public hospitals from 2019–20 to 2023–24. In 2023–24, there were 189,694 nurses.
Public hospitals
Staff numbers (full time equivalent, or FTE) include staff employed in public hospitals and services managed or delivered at the local hospital network-level or state/territory health authority-level.
In 2023–24:
- there were 467,000 FTE staff working in public hospitals
- of these, 42% (or 194,000) were Nurses and 13% (or 59,600) were Salaried medical officers.
Between 2019–20 and 2023–24, the average annual increase in the total number of FTE staff was 3.9% – for Salaried medical officers it was 4.6%, and for Nurses it was 3.9%.
These staff numbers do not include visiting medical officers in public hospitals.
Private hospitals
The staffing mix in private hospitals is different from that in public hospitals. This is because most medical services are provided by visiting medical specialists (who are not hospital employees), and the range of services provided is different.
In 2016–17 (most recent available data):
- there were 69,300 FTE staff working in private hospitals
- 1,400 FTE Salaried medical professionals were reported by private hospitals, accounting for 2.0% of FTE staff in both private free-standing day hospital facilities and private hospitals not specialising in same-day care
- 38,300 FTE Nurses were reported by private hospitals, accounting for 52% of FTE staff in private free-standing day hospital facilities and 56% of FTE staff in other private hospitals.
Public hospitals
These data are sourced from data from the National Public Hospital Establishments Database. Additional data on public hospital staff and salaries can be found in the Hospital resources 2023–24 (XLS 544 kB) data tables, refer to tables 3.1–3.4 and S3.1.
More information about the data, including Appendixes and caveat information, is available in the About the data section. Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary.
Private hospitals
The most recent data available for private hospitals and private free-standing day hospital facilities is for 2016–17, based on the Private Health Establishments Collection (PHEC) conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The PHEC data were discontinued after the 2016–17 reference period and therefore data from 2017–18 are not available.
References
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2016–17), Private Hospitals, Australia, ABS Website, accessed 9 September 2025.