A quarter of civil servants are now in their 30s as the average age of the civil service continues to fall.
The 2026 Civil Service Statistics data release, published last week by the Cabinet Office, shows that officials aged 30-39 have become the biggest age group in the civil service, while the median age in the civil service has fallen to 43.
The 30-39 age group now represent 25.0% of civil servants, up from 24.1% in 2024-25, and from 21.2% of the workforce in 2015-16. They have taken over as the biggest age group from 50-59-ers, which had been the biggest cohort for the last decade.
Civil servants in their 50s now represent 23.8% of civil servants, down from 24.8% last year, and from 32.1% in 2016 – and have reduced as a proportion of the civil service in each of the last ten years.
The 50s age group remains a little larger than the 40s, which represent 23.5% of the civil service. Earlier this century, people in their 40s were the biggest age cohort – holding that position from 2007, when civil service-wide age data began being reported,until 2014, peaking at 33.8% in 2008.
The fourth biggest group remains 20-29, which has risen from representing 10.1% of the civil service to 15.4% over the last decade.
The 60-64 age group also remains the fifth biggest in the civil service, and has grown consistently as a proportion of the total workforce, now representing 9.0% of the civil service compared to 6.5% ten years ago.
Similarly, the 65+ age group remains the sixth largest age group, but has grown significantly as a proportion of the civil service, rising from 1.8% in 2016 to 3.1% in 2026.
Finally, the 16-19 age group remains the smallest in the civil service, representing just 0.2% of officials, having fallen in recent years from a high of 0.4% between 2015-16 and 2018-19.