Mapping employment dynamics in public agencies with payroll data: A methodological framework with an application to...

Area of Science:

• Public Administration
• Labor Economics
• Organizational Behavior

Background:

• Understanding public sector employment dynamics is crucial for effective governance.
• Existing methodologies often lack generalizability and cross-national comparability.
• Analyzing staff turnover and longevity is key to assessing public sector workforce stability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel, replicable methodology for analyzing public sector employment dynamics.
• To examine patterns of employment stability, turnover, and staff longevity across state agencies.
• To develop quantifiable metrics for assessing workforce stability and electoral disruptions.

Main Methods:

• Utilized payroll data from over 325,000 Chilean civil servants (2006-2020).
• Applied mixed-effects Cox survival models and linear mixed models.
• Incorporated Propensity Score Matching for enhanced causal interpretation and introduced Service Frailty and Relative Turnover Difference metrics.

Main Results:

• Identified substantial differences in turnover patterns between regular and post-election years.
• Revealed significant inter-agency heterogeneity in turnover and employee longevity, driven by latent agency characteristics.
• Found that agency-specific factors, beyond contract type and rank, largely explain workforce disparities.

Conclusions:

• The proposed methodology offers precise, cross-nationally comparable benchmarks for public sector employment dynamics.
• The framework provides transparent and scalable tools for analyzing workforce stability.
• Findings underscore the importance of agency context and electoral cycles in shaping public sector employment stability.