A new analysis by the Manx TaxPayers’ Alliance has found that the Isle of Man has approximately 11.9% more government workers, per capita, than the United Kingdom.

Sparked by public discussions on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, the new calculation gives further support to widespread calls for the Isle of Man Government to curtail its staff splurges.

According to an Isle of Man Newspaper report of data published through a Freedom of Information request, there are approximately 8,324 Government staff in the Isle of Man. This number is understood to not include staff employed by local governments, and the Isle of Man Newspapers reported that this number does “not include Isle of Man Post Office and Manx Utilities staff”. The 2023 Isle of Man Population report claims that there are 84,530 people in the Isle of Man. This means that for every 100 residents of the Isle of Man, 9.85 are Government staff.

On the adjacent Isles of the United Kingdom, the Office for National Statistics reports that there are approximately 5,900,000 public sector personnel, and that there was a population of approximately 67,023,300 in the middle of 2021. This means that for every 100 residents of the United Kingdom, 8.80 are Government staff.

Consequently, there are approximately 11.9% more Government staff per capita in the Isle of Man than in the United Kingdom.

There are some limitations to the comparability of the numbers in the two different jurisdictions. For example, the Isle of Man numbers do not include employees of local government authorities, which makes the Isle of Man Government worker number lower than it would be if these staff were included. Thus, while imperfect, these numbers are likely to represent a fair and reasonable comparison between the two jurisdictions.

Source Documents

The relevant source documents are linked in the body of the text above.

The calculations are published online here.