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Raw data: How many people work for the government?

Published on 36 Comments on Raw data: How many people work for the government?

Inspired by a Twitter conversation last night, here's the answer:

As of now, about 3 million people work for the federal government; 5 million for state governments; and 14 million for local governments.

36 thoughts on “Raw data: How many people work for the government?”

  1. jamesepowell

    6.7% of the total? Doesn't seem like a crippling bureaucracy of anti-business. Especially when you consider how many of the local government employees are public school teachers, police officers, and firefighters.

  2. lawnorder

    "Excluding military" is cheating. Military personnel work for the federal government just as certainly as postal clerks.

    The next question is measurement. Is this "full time equivalents" or is it total number of names on the payroll?

    1. HokieAnnie

      It all depends on how they've broken out the data doesn't it? For the most part Military personnel aren't doing ordinary jobs yet they do get paychecks drawn on US Treasury funds. I'm guessing the exercise was to put numbers to claims of "overgrown bureaucracy". FWIW the number of government employees has plummeted since the 1980s, automation is a big reason why but also before automation really kicked into high gear, a ton of folks are contractors for the government.

      1. bouncing_b

        As Federal employee since the early 90s I well remember VP Al Gore's "reinventing government". They outsourced everything they could, just like large corporation were doing.

        The model for a research lab like the one I work in became for scientists to be managers of teams of contractors who are hired for a project, with no job security. In my lab half the people are not feds. They don't show up in Kevin's chart.

        In practice many or most of these people work their entire careers in this state. They find a niche where their skills become essential, maybe switching projects every few years, but are hardly ever laid off.

        1. HokieAnnie

          Very true - I used to work for a program that placed new Ph.D. in federal labs in a Postdoc program. By the oughts the program was shrinking as support for the basic research plummeted. Then I ended upon that contractor treadmill for six years before I was able to jump into a civil service billet. But in other areas automation has eliminated a ton of positions, no more paper files, all electronic for my agency so no more techs, nearly all analysts instead.

    1. D_Ohrk_E1

      Nothing much has changed, though. It still requires the Chinese gov't to intervene and direct Huawei to send new instructions to its equipment.

      As a prudent measure, however, removing Huawei hardware is a good idea.

      Still, the greater problem is autonomy of Taiwan and specifically TSMC. The US needs to work specifically w/ Taiwanese companies to move more of its advanced chip manufacturing outside of Taiwan.

  4. Vog46

    speaking of off topic but related to work. This appeared in the Raleigh News and Observer on July 19

    https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article263619353.html?ac_cid=DM674770&ac_bid=516420731

    If you have heard about long COVID — a condition in which symptoms of a coronavirus infection can linger for weeks, months or years — you may wonder how widespread it is. By February, more than half of the U.S. population was estimated to have already been infected with COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Long COVID may occur at least four weeks after a COVID-19 infection, the agency notes. About 28 million working-age adults in the U.S., and likely more to date, have developed the condition after testing positive for the virus, workforce expert Katie Bach, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, testified at a House subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, July 19.

    “Long Covid is leading millions of Americans to reduce their work schedules or stop working,” Bach wrote in testimony ahead of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing. Currently, about 16 million people in the U.S. are estimated to have long COVID, according to federal data, and 3.3 million adults are estimated to be out of work full-time because of how the condition has affected their health, Bach said. This is 2.4% of full-time workers in the U.S

    Additionally, an estimated 2.6 million more workers dealing with long COVID symptoms have had their work hours reduced by 25%, Bach testified. Among affected workers are those in health care, according to written testimony by Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, a physiatrist and professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, who spoke at the hearing. Verduzco-Gutierrez said she has treated a number of nurses and physicians experiencing long COVID, including some who “have not been able to return to the operating room or to the frontline or the patient bedside.”

    Meanwhile, Bach said “the number of people not working due to long COVID will likely continue to grow as more people become infected.” The hearing was held as the infectious omicron subvariant BA.5 made up roughly 78% of COVID-19 cases nationwide for the week ending July 16, CDC data estimates show. UC Davis Health has described it as the “most easily transmissible” subvariant. In May, the CDC estimated 1 in 5 adults may develop at least one post-COVID symptom following a COVID-19 infection, McClatchy News previously reported. For those 65 and older, the risk is slightly higher.

    Of the Americans currently out of work because of long COVID, “many of these impacted families lose necessary income and employer-based health insurance at a time when they need it the most,” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., the subcommittee chairman, said in his opening remarks at the hearing. SYMPTOMS OF LONG COVID “Each of these persons with Long COVID are suffering and has a story that needs to be heard. Each of them has a different course – some even starting as asymptomatic or mild COVID-19 – with lingering and debilitating symptoms,” Verduzco-Gutierrez wrote. Most people diagnosed with long COVID were never hospitalized due to their initial infection, a study published as a white paper in May found, McClatchy News previously reported.

    Long COVID patients can have “a wide range of symptoms,” according to the CDC, and some include: Fatigue Fever Breathing troubles Cough Chest pain Heart palpitations Brain fog Headache Dizziness Digestive issues Depression or anxiety Muscle pain “I have had cancer survivors get Long COVID. They tell me that their post-COVID fatigue is 100-times worse than their cancer fatigue ever was,” Verduzco-Gutierrez said................
    *************************************************************
    The story goes on but MILLIONS are out of work because of long covid, with many more anticipated to contract it. ALL happening at a time when the BULK of our population is thinking about or actually retiring anyway?
    I do NOT believe the labor shortage will end any time soon given what is going on........

    1. iamr4man

      Long Covid continues to be badly described, at least in the things I have read. What I would like to know is how many people have Covid symptoms past 6 months, their vaccination status, and their ages.
      I’ve know a few people who had longer Covid symptoms but none over 6 months. The people I know who had longer Covid were unvaccinated when they caught it.

      1. Vog46

        Iamr4man
        This was one of the few articles I've seen that put a number on Long Covid.
        From the article:
        " and 3.3 million adults are estimated to be out of work full-time because of how the condition has affected their health, Bach said. This is 2.4% of full-time workers in the U.S

        Additionally, an estimated 2.6 million more workers dealing with long COVID symptoms have had their work hours reduced by 25%, Bach testified"

        So it appears as though COVID - IS - affecting labor force participation.
        What is concerning is that you can get a second case of Omicron very shortly after your first bout with it. The more you get it the better the chances of getting long COVID.
        We made the tactical error of going with the initial vaccines which were effective against Covid and beta versions. We saw increased breakthrough cases with Delta from both people with vaccinations and prior bouts of COVID.
        We now KNOW that letting it "wash through the population" was wrong as well. The speed at which this thing is changing has caught many of us by surprise. Natural immunity didn't work, nor did vaccines developed for the initial versions.
        And the "we can get a new vaccine to market in 90 days seems like a pipe dream.
        I am back to masking in public, keeping my distance and trying to avoid crowded venues - on top of being fully vax'd and double boosted. I just think the boosters were pushed too hard too early. We should have waited until we had an Omicron specific shot.
        They didn't call it a 'novel" coronavirus for 'nuthin......good groef

    1. golack

      And about 14% of the work force works in medical care--not government directly. So about 25% of the work force is government and healthcare combined.

  8. Justin

    Is this about trump replacing federal workers in 2025 with his fanatical supporters? Democrats will have to learn to love government shutdowns.

    1. Justin

      Republicans get rid of their enemies when they get a chance. I’m glad I don’t work for government or live in these awful places… yet.

      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/23/california-shasta-county-far-right-extremists-politics-pandemic

      “Right now, we’re experiencing a brain drain of the best talent in the county,” said one local business owner, who asked to remain unnamed due to the “culture of political violence”. “People are literally sick to their stomach worried about what’s going to happen to their county departments.”

      Good luck.

    2. akapneogy

      "Is this about trump replacing federal workers in 2025 with his fanatical supporters?"

      It's about Reagan's nine most terrifying words in the Englsh language "I am from the government and I am here to help." finally come true.

    1. golack

      Always fun!

      Note, not like cold/flu/covid ....
      They detected viral particles in the air when changing the linen on the beds--and not in all cases. In some of those cases, the viruses were replication-competent.

      This study was done because there was one case of a healthcare worker in the UK getting the virus that was suspected to be due to changing the linens.

  10. SecondLook

    You could add the government workforce the employees of private contractors whose work is primarily for the government.
    Lockheed-Martin is a nice example: 114,000 workers, $135 billion in revenue, and over 70% of what they do is DOD exclusive.
    You could say that they are a larger example of the vast number of businesses that provides goods and services to the government, save that to all intents and purposes LM really is a de facto state enterprise.
    We just enjoy the fiction that military suppliers aren't really government entities.

  12. rick_jones

    The decadal bumps to federal are census takers I assume?

    Apart from federal it looks like computers et al have not made “government” any more efficient?

    1. golack

      Fire, police, health inspectors, home inspectors, jails, etc. all need boots on the ground.

      I have a friend working in smaller towns, and computers are ... how shall I saw .... not used to their full potential. When the population is in the range of 5 to 20K, there's only so much a town can do--and they'll contract out (via the county?) for some basic services, e.g. tax collection, 911 call center, etc.

      1. golack

        Forgot to mention teachers too. I presume they're in the numbers for "local" government. And state university systems employ a lot of people too.

  13. typhoon

    Seems like there was a significant decline in the federal workforce in the Clinton years (1992-2000). My recollection is that Clinton put Gore in charge of streamlining the federal government. Looks like it worked.

    1. HokieAnnie

      Not really - they swapped out federal workers for contractors. Real reductions due to automation didn't really start until this century - but a lot of stuff the government does is people intensive so the numbers aren't going to go down that much.

  15. Vog46

    Notice they were careful NOT to say reduce government employee numbers but REPLACE government employees with Trump supporters. Republicans have no desire to reduce services - they just want it done with THEIR people in charge.
    Jobs are an easy way to re-pay an ardent supporter who doesn't have a clue as to how things work - think Betsy DeVoss, and Ryan Zinke

    In spite of efficiencies and subbing out work government employment in total has not gone down enough to claim we have smaller governments - at all levels. Any MANY of these functions are done by Veterans. NCDOT employment numbers are about 30% veterans IIRC.

    The implication that either political party will reduce the size of government is the biggest hoax every placed on the voting public

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