How Many Government Employees Are There?

Census Bureau Data | Self

[fruser1]

Given all the talk of wanting a smaller government, I figured I'd look up how many government employees there are. I found this info rather easily but thought it was worth passing on.

These numbers are from 2008 data. The addition and percentages I performed myself:

Number of Full-Time Federal Employees - 2,518,101 Part-Time - 250,785 Full-Time State - 3,818,577 Part-Time - 1,451,002 Full-Time Local - 11,039,250 Part-Time - 3,383,976

TOTAL - 22,461,691

2008 US Population (est) - 304,059,724

% of Gov't employees - 7.38%

Inverse - 13.536

So this means that there's a government employee for every 13.5 people in the country.

Below are links to where I got this data. You can check out your own state-specific numbers there if you want.

http://www.census.gov/govs/apes/ http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

For State and Local data, I looked at the "US Summary Table" which explicitly lists full-time and part-time categories separately. For the Fed data, I had to subtract "full-time" from the "total" to get number of part-time employees above, as that table did not explicitly list the number of part-time employees.

[rcrngroup]

These numbers are from 2008 data. The addition and percentages I performed myself: Number of Full-Time Federal Employees - 2,518,101 Part-Time - 250,785 Full-Time State - 3,818,577 Part-Time - 1,451,002 Full-Time Local - 11,039,250 Part-Time - 3,383,976 TOTAL - 22,461,691 2008 US Population (est) - 304,059,724 % of Gov't employees - 7.38% Inverse - 13.536 So this means that there's a government employee for every 13.5 people in the country.

Government (Federal, state & local) needs to be cut by 50% IMMEDIATELY and then another 50% next year. This should apply to cutting gubmint employees as well as spending. Cut it to the bone!!!

[mad_as_he$$]

It has expanded dramatically since 2008.

[FrogMom]

Xlinton swelled the ranks of contractors to “shrink the fedgov”, too.

Please be careful when painting with a very broad brush. FrogDad is a full-time Civil Servant working in the DoD. He works his butt off.

Admittedly, the “Civil Servants” to be vilified are legion, but some are necessary. FrogDad teaches new soldiers, sailors, and marines the military job he did for 24 years. It's a job that must be done and who is better qualified?

Yes, there should be layoffs at the PO. Yes, there should be layoffs in the great buddy pool hired in DC. Yes, about 25 of Mrs. BO’s “personal assistants” should be fired.

Also, there should be no unionization of fed workers allowed. It's already hard to fire the SOBs, being unionized makes it nearly impossible.

[drpix]

Juggle the 1.2 million “workers” any way you want, with even 50% devoted to support staff, with any number of validations and re-validations, corrections and re-corrections, with any ratio of full-timers and part-timers, with any ratio public mail form compliance and non-compliance. In a day of computer automation, how does it take 1.2 million to count 310 million without intolerable levels of “feather-bedding” and no show jobs?

[Texas resident]

Your right on the govt attorneys and engineers. But have you ever seen the immense size of the Dept of Education or the Dept of Ag or the Dept of Transportation buildings in DC? They are some of the most massive buildings in the city and you can bet every office is full. What they hell do we need more and more taxpayer funded doo gooders telling the states how to educate their kids and how to grow their crops?

[Nervous Tick]

>> what do all these people DO ALL DAY!!?!?!?!?!?

They SPEND YOUR MONEY.

Think of them as family that moved in to mooch off of you.

[muawiyah]

The Ag building looks more capacious than it is.

There are several complexes in DC built BEFORE AIR CONDITIONING. They have high ceilings, large windows, and all offices open along large, high hallways.

The USPS headquarters at L'Enfant Plaza has more employees in it than the 4 story Ag building on Independence ~ and that has to do with the impact air conditioning has on space requirements.

The greater number of federal workers in the Department of Agriculture work in field offices all over the country ~ mostly in small towns and rural areas. That's why you have no idea how many there really are.

Given that agriculture is a major American business employing millions of people (directly, or in food processing, sales, services, transport, etc.) the number of folks employed in USDA is, in fact, NOT excessive.

[ml/nj]

I've been doing some work on this. I'm not done yet but I thought I'd add my partial work to this thread.

The graph below shows the the number of full-time-equivalent employees by state expressed as a percentage of the population since 1952. I derived this from Commerce Dept data. Data before 1952 are much harder to come by. I once started looking for data for NJ and my recollection is that the numbers I found were down around one percent back in the early 20th century.

Since it's not easy to tell, I would point out that the states with the highest 2007 percentages are DC, and Alaska. The lowest are Hawaii and Nevada.

[Note: that the site where this chart is hosted will be closing down soon.] ML/NJ

[fruser1]

The tables do not include military. These would be civilian employees. Oddly enough, though, I see the Coast Guard is included in these totals, under the Department of Homeland Security.

[fruser1]

The number only includes employees, not contractors. These would be folks getting W-2’s from Uncle Sam, not a private company.

[Cobra64]

The link is broken.

"Sorry, the page you requested has either been moved or is no longer available on this server."

[fruser1]

I found this link:

http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/ms0.pdf

which indicates totaly US military as 1,471,008 (1/31/2010).
Of that, 43,391 is in the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard folks are the only armed forces counted in the census totals. The other services are not.

[fruser1]

There are actually two links there on the same line. It didn’t post “pretty”. You’ll have to copy off one at a time.

Below is the first one:

http://www.census.gov/govs/apes/

[Scotsman will be Free]

Thanks.

[fbanta]

The problems with reported federal employment numbers is that they have not substantially changed since the 1950’s despite the huge growth in government. For example, a major debate between “W” and Gore in 2004 was job creation. Gore claimed 600K jobs created between 2000 and 2004 while “W” claimed 2.6 Million created. The difference according to “W” was government jobs created. So while there is a reported increase of 2 million in 4 years, the official number never waivered.

We know that the Dept of Energy, created in 1978 now has 24000 direct employees and 100,000 contract employees, but the reported federal number hasn’t changed since the 1950’s.

Neither my Congressman nor my Senators will respond to my request for an accurate federal government headcount. It shouldn’t be that difficult, so obviously people in both parties don’t want the truth to be known.