Elon Musk’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) has been making a variety of noise about all of the federal workers it plans to fireplace. The DOGE individuals have framed complete federal employment as one thing of a proxy for the overall dimension of the federal authorities. Slicing the federal workforce is all effectively 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 overall variety of federal employees was 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 pace. Since Nineteen Fifties, federal spending has elevated by greater than ten-fold whereas federal employment has not even doubled.
The federal authorities has grown a lot sooner than federal employment as a result of most people paid to do issues by the federal authorities will not be precise federal workers. Most federally funded employees at the moment are contractors and grant-funded employees. This doesn’t even depend the legions of state and native authorities workers 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 speak about federal employment is usually theater. That is demonstrated in how DOGE spokesmen inform us how laborious will probably be to fireplace federal workers with civil service protections. That’s, the DOGE persons are already explaining to us why they gained’t be capable to reduce federal employment—most likely so that they have an excuse for why so little of the federal work power will really go away over the subsequent 4 years.
If Trump’s individuals have any curiosity in really reducing the quantity of people that work for the federal authorities, they will merely begin with reducing the thousands and thousands of federal contract and grant employees who really outnumber the overall variety of federal workers. With out federal contracts and federal grants, these workers go away. Wringing our fingers about what number of civil service employees there are is usually a distraction when the actual downside is federal spending.
The “Regular” Federal Workforce Has Fallen for Thirty Years
As of 2023, there have been roughly 2.9 million common federal employees, together with postal employees. These are the individuals who generally acknowledge as “civil service” employees who’re immediately employed by authorities businesses. 2023’s complete is down from 1990 when the overall variety of federal employees was 3.1 million. What progress we do see in authorities employment comes from state and native employees. Together with authorities employees 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 employees per 10,000 Individuals. In 2023, that quantity was 680.
This quantity tremendously understates the fact, and never simply because these totals don’t embrace army personnel. If we wish an actual measure of how many individuals are paid by federal tax revenues and federal borrowing, we have now to look effectively past the civil service employees that DOGE claims to be so frightened about. Somewhat, 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 overall variety of taxpayer funded employees was greater than 9 million:
The federal authorities employs practically 9.1 million employees, comprising practically 6 p.c of complete employment in america. The determine consists of practically 2.1 million federal workers, 4.1 million contract workers, 1.2 million grant workers, 1.3 million energetic responsibility army personnel, and greater than 500,000 postal service workers. … many taxpayers could not understand they’re moreover subsidizing a ballooning shadow authorities of some 5.3 million contract and grant workers. Whereas politicians typically promise to chop the scale of presidency, many fail to acknowledge the growing variety of contract employees.
These contract and grant employees far outnumber the “regular” federal employees. As proven by the Venture 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 p.c of that workforce because the Nineteen Eighties.”
One other research from the Brookings establishment exhibits how the blended jobs tremendously outnumber the federal jobs that DOGE is fixated on:
For instance, in 2020, grant and contract employees totaled greater than 6.8 million. Common federal employees? They totaled solely 2.7 million (counting postal employees.) In different phrases, any dialogue of federal employment that ignores the contract and grant employees largely misses the purpose.
Contract employees, after all, are all over the place. The ranks of aerospace engineers, Silicon Valley companies, and the “tech sector” on the whole is closely populated with thousands and thousands of employees who’re de facto federal workers.
We’ve no cause to count on the Trump administration to go after these federal contract jobs, although. Throughout Trump’s first time period, he grew federal spending to pay thousands and thousands of latest employees funded by federal {dollars}:
Regardless of marketing campaign guarantees on the contrary, Trump opened the contract and grant spigots as a substitute, 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 p.c throughout the Trump years, and it ought to shock nobody that the development continued unabated by 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 all the time been captivated with working up huge 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 concept how its cash is spent. However, it is rather unlikely we’ll see any efforts on the a part of this administration to rein within the legions of engineers and laptop programmers who ostensibly work for personal firms, however are literally federal employees.
Simply Reduce Spending
Slicing the federal work power doesn’t require any ornate arguments concerning the civil service or what number of federal workers earn a living from home. If the Trump administration is severe about reducing the federal workforce, it’ll deal with merely reducing federal spending. If federal spending falls considerably, thousands and thousands of employees paid by federal contracts and grants must be a part of the personal sector. Furthermore, thousands and thousands of state and native authorities jobs will disappear as effectively, provided that a lot of them are basically federally funded positions. It’s not likely any extra difficult than that.
