Labor's "new working class" were critical to the party's New South Wales election victory, a former Labor strategist says.
Analysis of census data showed the largest proportion of public sector workers live in west and south-west Sydney, and the Central Coast.
Commenting on the party's wins in the seats of Camden, Parramatta, Riverstone, Penrith and East Hills on Saturday night, Kos Samaras, a former Victorian Labor deputy campaign director, said public sector workers were the dominant cohort in those seats.
A third of the nearly 400,000 public sector workers across the state are women, and a third are aged under 35, Mr Samaras told the panel on the ABC's election coverage on Saturday night.
"They have effectively now become, across the country, but particularly in New South Wales and Victoria, Labor's new working class," he said.
"There's a slow realisation that this particular group, largely females, tertiary educated, are overwhelmingly the biggest supporters of the red side of politics."
Several of the seats that Labor flipped to install them in government have high numbers of public sector workers.
The electorate of Heathcote in southern Sydney, previously held by the Liberals but notionally a marginal Labor seat, was won by Labor on a projected 10 per cent margin.
Around one in six workers in Heathcote are employed in the public sector — the second highest proportion in the state.
The Western Sydney electorates of Penrith and Camden, which Labor won from the Liberals, have 13 per cent of workers employed by the NSW government.
Labor were ahead in the Liberal-held seat of Terrigal on the central coast when counting stopped on Saturday night.
More than 10 per cent of workers in that electorate are public servants.
June looms as the first test of the new government's negotiating mettle, when the award covering the state's nurses and midwives expires.
General secretary of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, Shaye Candish, said the union would be pushing for a pay increase of at least seven per cent.
"The removal of the wage cap automatically is going to make a huge difference to how we negotiate," Ms Candish said.
She said the biggest crisis facing the industry was workforce shortages, something the Teachers union is also concerned about.
"The defeat of the Perrottet government puts an end to the neglect and denial which has left our schools and TAFE colleges in a state of crisis," NSW Teachers Federation President Angelo Gavrielatos said.
Premier-elect Chris Minns credited the people of NSW for voting for essential workers.
"I'm proud to say today, the people of New South Wales voted for the removal of the unfair wages cap," the Labor leader said in his victory speech on Saturday night.
"Friends, they voted for our nurses, for our paramedics and police."
Labor have pledged to abolish the three per cent public sector wage cap implemented by the Perrottet government.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, the premier-elect said Labor's plans to help essential workers was an "urgent priority".
He said he would sit down with health minister-elect Ryan Park and education minister-elect Prue Car to implement those plans as soon as possible.
Census data shows that the largest number of teachers, around 2,300, live in the safe Labor seat of Blue Mountains.
Camden and Heathcote, which both turned red this election, have the second and third highest number of teachers in the state — more than 2,000 each.
Riverstone, a north western Sydney electorate that backed Labor on Saturday, has the fifth highest number of nurses in the state.
"We're only going to be as strong as the nurses and teachers and paramedics and police officers and fire fighters to do the job required for public services in this state," Mr Minns said on Sunday.
