The equivalent of 821 full-time workers will be gone by the end of the financial year, after the state government failed to reach an agreement for a pay freeze.

Community and Public Sector Union secretary Tom Lynch said agency heads had been given until the first week of December to identify the workers who would be leaving.

"This is being done with no consultation with the workers at all," he said.

Mr Lynch said senior public servants "were tearing their hair out" trying to find cuts without cutting services.

Treasurer Peter Gutwein would not comment on how long it would take for the workers to be identified.

"I'm not going to go through a running commentary on the processes that the government is engaged in," he said.

"This is a difficult decision for the government - believe me it's a decision we did not want to make, but have had to make."

The pay freeze failure means 460 jobs will be cut this financial year, in addition to the 361 announced in the budget.

The equivalent of 266 full-time positions will be shed from the Education Department, while the Department of Health and Human Services will shed 224 workers.

The Department of State Growth will lose 174 positions, or more than 21 per cent of its workforce.

When quizzed yesterday, Premier Will Hodgman and a number of ministers refused to guarantee that front-line staff would not be cut.

Mr Gutwein said the government had already received 823 expressions of interest for voluntary redundancies and the early retirement program.