More than 900 public servants at the Commonwealth's largest department are to lose their jobs this financial year, with the full number disguised in last week's budget by a typo.
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Department of Human Services officials have confirmed that 918 workers will be shed in 2016-17 and not 810 as reported in the budget papers.
The federal government service-delivery workhorse, which runs Centrelink, Medicare and the Child Support Agency, will see also see its funding reduced by $100 million year-on-year, thanks in part to a "special" efficiency cut of $20 million a year.
DHS's acting boss could not tell Senate estimates whether there would be forced redundancies but said the department would continue to protect "core services".
Chief financial officer Mark Jenkin clarified the situation for the senators late on Friday in Canberra.
"The correct numbers are 918," Mr Jenkin told the committee.
"We don't put the budget papers together and talking to [the] Finance [Department] about it, there was a transposition error in the 2015-2016 actuals."
Mr Jenkin also confirmed the budget papers got the department's headcount wrong, reporting 30,102 when it should have been 30,210.
The department's finance boss said the staff cuts were a direct result of the budget cuts.
"It's the result of a whole range of things. Our departmental resourcing drops by about $100 million year-on-year and that's the accumulated effect of a whole range of things, one of the measures that have terminated or eased or slipped from previous years and new measures that have come on," Mr Jenkin said.
"There have been a range of parameter updates, there's been the application of a normal efficiency dividend ... and there is a special efficiency measure applying to us of $20 million per annum.
"So the accumulation of all of that is a reduction in our funding which flows through, naturally enough, to the number of staff employed."
