Elon Musk has successfully focused the discourse on the size of the federal workforce, and now there are bad numbers floating around on all sides. Conservatives like to show partial numbers that are hugely inflated by growth at the Department of Homeland Security. Liberals show numbers that include only salaried workers.
The real number covers the entire government and includes contract workers, who make up a huge portion of the federal workforce. And since the workforce obviously goes up as population grows, you have to adjust for that.
So here it is, based on figures from Paul Light, who is probably the best source of reliable figures we have.
-10% in my lifetime. No wonder shit sucks.
Are we supposed to notice the downward trends until GWB and DJT were elected?
Both of those, as Kevin notes, explicable as DHS staffing.
When will you learn, Kevin? Facts don't matter to Rethuglicans. They beleive the government is bigger and therefore it is.
yeah, using expenditure data from Federal Procurement Data System and non-contingency grant dollars from the Federal Acquisition Awards Data System to estimate the federal workforce seems rife with issues
a federal grant to a city health department may fund additional city staff or contractor support, but none of those workers are "federal workers".
They're under federal oversight as their bosses.
Not counting contract work is silly.
There are different groups. I was a contract employee of a federal agency, working in a government building on a government-furnished computer, under the supervision of ‘Feds’, which I definitely was not, in that context. Reviews and compensation were decided by my company, work assignments by federal employees. I generally performed the same tasks as the Feds, including writing research plans, IRB prospectuses, research reports, and conducting research. That’s different from, say, federal contracts for food or housekeeping services.
For me, its difficult to evaluate this chart.
- should the percentage go down because, with better technology one can do more with less? I assume the DMV has better systems and processes today, when compared to the 1980s.
- should the percentage go up, as we continue to ask the Federal government to do more? We have lots of new programs etc.
Also, I imagine the figures fail to capture the significant rise in outsourcing. Lots of jobs that were once done by the Federal government, are now provided by third parties contracting with the government. For example, food service at Federal locations used to be provided by Federal employees: today that is a third party contract.
??? DMVs are state agencies, not Federal.
Staffing is down at the Social Security Administration; partly offset by technology adoption and higher productivity, but still increasing processing delays, as the number of beneficiaries has grown: https://www.ssa.gov/securitystat
Disclosure; As an employee of a private-sector firm, I worked on a contract that evaluated the use of a particular technology implementation in the SSA Disability division. Most of the staff are employees of the states; their salaries are federally paid. I observed operations and interviewed staff at multiple sites in several states. Incidental to the productivity focus, I found that staff had a much better grasp of the mission of their division than I have seen in any other organization.
DMV is also slang for the National Capital Region, aka DC and the surrounding suburbs.
Seriously, the DMV! You realize the federal government has no connection to DMVs. And it does capture outsourcing, since that's contractors. You clearly are eminently qualified to be a maggot.
KenSchulz and memyselfandi -my error, clearly the DMV is a state entity. I made a silly mistake. Rather, I should have used the IRS or many other Federal agencies.
memyselfandi - nice words. As for the contractor topic, I believe that means an individual working for an agency, under the IRS definition of a contractor. I do not believe these figures includes all third party contracts/vendors.
Unlike the other respondents, I see that "DMV" is an example of a well known government agency, and, just as it has used automation (the internet) to allow self-service for many functions, we would expect that federal agencies have similarly automated some functions.
Did you read the post? Kevin specifically mentions contract workers. It is also named in the chart. Seriously, did you read the post?
Why count only civilians? Members of the armed forces are on the government payroll too.
Yeah, I noticed that too. Reagan said the scariest words were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help," but he was part of the government and so is the military.
Military employment doesn't provide domestic services.
Surprise, surprise, federal employment falls sharply under democrats, and mostly rises (or falls weakly) under republicans. much like the deficit which always falls drastically under democrat presidents and explodes under republicans.
That seems like mild improvements due to economies of scale. I'd expect larger improvements from automation. I wonder how one would measure the different effects.
There have been improvements from automation, but the population, and the number and complexity of Federal Government programs and services, grow over time. There are systematic, empirically-validated ways of measuring productivity improvements in services delivery. I don’t expect anything remotely like that from DOGE.
Well, we all know that no Repub strategists read this blog. But I might as well point out: (1) this shows 2.8% of the population not including military, works for the FED government, (2) I don't know, would one say that the people who work for the state and local government, at all levels (including teachers) would get this up to 10%.
Is it ten percent? Or ten percent of all working age adults?
Regardless, Repubs live in some fantasy where the number of people working in the Gov should be zero percent, and the Dems only defend this number on a program by program basis.
I have no idea (and for sure, neither does any Repub) what the appropriate percentage of a population working for the government is.
That's because there is no appropriate percentage. It's nonsense. In rural areas, there are more people working for 'the government' - checking weather still needs to be checked, roads still need to be paved, forests still need to be ranged, mail takes more time to deliver, etc.
Why does it matter if the town doctor - if there's only the one - is employed by the government or not?
I could not agree more, although this chart was Nationally. In a specific area who cares if 100 % of the population works for the government?
Its only the crazy Repub anti-government religion that preaches the obvious falsehood that private enterprize can do anything better than the gov.
As technology improved I would expect numbers to go down to some degree. But I'm also curious if these stats include DoD contract workers. There was tremendous outsourcing of jobs in the late 90's and early 2000's.
They're not providing domestic services. They're employment, sure, but that's it.
28.9! 28.9! What are we going to do! I had no idea it was 28.9! Oh my god. Oh my god. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be 28.9! This can not be happening. This can NOT be happening!