Elon Musk’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) has been making numerous noise about all of the federal staff it plans to fireside. The DOGE folks have framed complete federal employment as one thing of a proxy for the full dimension of the federal authorities. Slicing the federal workforce is all nicely and good, however in actuality, the scale of the federal payrolls doesn’t actually inform us a lot concerning the progress of the federal authorities.
Federal employment has been flat for many years. If the full variety of federal staff was an excellent proxy for federal energy, we’d be pressured to conclude that the federal authorities has reduced in size and weaker over the previous thirty years. Clearly, that’s not remotely true provided that federal spending has elevated at breakneck velocity. Since Fifties, federal spending has elevated by greater than ten-fold whereas federal employment has not even doubled.
The federal authorities has grown a lot quicker than federal employment as a result of the general public paid to do issues by the federal authorities will not be precise federal staff. Most federally funded staff are actually contractors and grant-funded staff. This doesn’t even rely the legions of state and native authorities staff whose jobs are partially funded by federal switch funds to the states and locals.
Like a lot of what’s popping out of the Trump administration, this discuss federal employment is usually theater. That is demonstrated in how DOGE spokesmen inform us how exhausting it is going to be to fireside federal staff with civil service protections. That’s, the DOGE individuals are already explaining to us why they received’t have the ability to lower federal employment—most likely in order that they have an excuse for why so little of the federal work drive will truly go away over the subsequent 4 years.
If Trump’s folks have any curiosity in truly reducing the quantity of people that work for the federal authorities, they will merely begin with reducing the tens of millions of federal contract and grant staff who truly outnumber the full variety of federal staff. With out federal contracts and federal grants, these staff go away. Wringing our fingers about what number of civil service staff there are is usually a distraction when the actual drawback is federal spending.
The “Regular” Federal Workforce Has Fallen for Thirty Years
As of 2023, there have been roughly 2.9 million common federal staff, together with postal staff. These are the individuals who generally acknowledge as “civil service” staff who’re instantly employed by authorities businesses. 2023’s complete is down from 1990 when the full variety of federal staff was 3.1 million. What progress we do see in authorities employment comes from state and native staff. Together with authorities staff at all ranges, authorities employment continued to develop quickly even after 1990 when federal employment peaked. But, even by this measure, complete authorities employment has been largely flat.
Certainly, on a per capita foundation, complete authorities employment has declined for greater than 20 years. In 2002, there have been 747 authorities staff per 10,000 Individuals. In 2023, that quantity was 680.
This quantity drastically understates the fact, and never simply because these totals don’t embody army personnel. If we would like an actual measure of how many individuals are paid by federal tax revenues and federal borrowing, now we have to look nicely past the civil service staff that DOGE claims to be so fearful about. Relatively, we have to have a look at the so-called “blended” federal workforce.
As famous at The Hill again in 2019—earlier than the covid spending spree—the full variety of taxpayer funded staff was greater than 9 million:
The federal authorities employs practically 9.1 million staff, comprising practically 6 % of complete employment in the USA. The determine consists of practically 2.1 million federal staff, 4.1 million contract staff, 1.2 million grant staff, 1.3 million energetic obligation army personnel, and greater than 500,000 postal service staff. … many taxpayers might not understand they’re moreover subsidizing a ballooning shadow authorities of some 5.3 million contract and grant staff. Whereas politicians typically promise to chop the scale of presidency, many fail to acknowledge the rising variety of contract staff.
These contract and grant staff far outnumber the “regular” federal staff. As proven by the Challenge on Authorities Oversight in 2017, “contractors have long been the single largest segment of Uncle Sam’s “blended workforce,” accounting for between 30 and 42 % of that workforce because the Nineteen Eighties.”
One other research from the Brookings establishment reveals how the blended jobs drastically outnumber the federal jobs that DOGE is fixated on:
For instance, in 2020, grant and contract staff totaled greater than 6.8 million. Common federal staff? They totaled solely 2.7 million (counting postal staff.) In different phrases, any dialogue of federal employment that ignores the contract and grant staff largely misses the purpose.
Contract staff, after all, are in all places. The ranks of aerospace engineers, Silicon Valley corporations, and the “tech sector” basically is closely populated with tens of millions of staff who’re de facto federal staff.
We have now no motive to anticipate the Trump administration to go after these federal contract jobs, although. Throughout Trump’s first time period, he grew federal spending to pay tens of millions of latest staff funded by federal {dollars}:
Regardless of marketing campaign guarantees on the contrary, Trump opened the contract and grant spigots as an alternative, including greater than 2 million jobs to the blended federal workforce together with 1 million within the Departments of Protection, Transportation, and Well being and Human Providers Alone.
Federal contract awards grew by over 40 % throughout the Trump years, and it ought to shock nobody that the pattern continued unabated by means of the Biden years:
Trump and his backers are likely to justify shoveling ever bigger quantities of taxpayer {dollars} to federal contractors on the truth that a lot of that’s basically army spending. Trump has at all times been passionate about operating up large new deficits and spending totals as long as it goes to the Pentagon.
The Pentagon, after all, simply failed its seventh audit in a row and has no thought how its cash is spent. Nonetheless, it is extremely unlikely we’ll see any efforts on the a part of this administration to rein within the legions of engineers and pc programmers who ostensibly work for personal firms, however are literally federal staff.
Simply Reduce Spending
Slicing the federal work drive doesn’t require any ornate arguments concerning the civil service or what number of federal staff do business from home. If the Trump administration is critical about reducing the federal workforce, it’ll give attention to merely reducing federal spending. If federal spending falls considerably, tens of millions of staff paid by federal contracts and grants should be a part of the personal sector. Furthermore, tens of millions of state and native authorities jobs will disappear as nicely, provided that lots of them are basically federally funded positions. It’s not likely any extra difficult than that.
