I noticed some point out that there was a pointy rise in federal civilian employment in 2023 and 2024. After I tracked down the numbers on the FRED web site run by the Federal Reserve Financial institution of St. Louis, it seemed like this:
Simply to be clear, that is civilian staff solely, and doesn’t rely the 1.3 million or so within the armed forces. Nevertheless, it does rely about 600,000 postal employees, though the US Postal Service is a semi-autonomous company. The spikes in federal employment each 10 years are non permanent employment associated to the decennial Census. If you happen to squint a little bit, you may as well see a sample the place authorities employment tends to rise in occasions of recession (shaded areas) or instantly after.
Nevertheless, it additionally appears as if federal employment had settled at beneath 2.8 million employees throughout non-recession, non-Census durations within the late Nineties, the primary decade of the 2000s, and from about 2013-2016. From this view, the rise of about 140,000 federal jobs from the beginning of 2023 to the current does seem like a break with previous patterns.
I do know that the rise in federal employment since 2023 is just not about further publish workplace employees. I’ve seen feedback within the press that the upper federal employment pertains to implementation of infrastructure and inexperienced power grants. However I confess that I haven’t carried out the work of monitoring the rise in federal employment within the final couple of years again to particular person companies. Somebody who needs to spend the time digging round on the on the Workplace of Personel Administration web site may accomplish that.
However in case you give attention to the two.4 million non-postal however civilian staff, the breakdown throughout companies appears like this, in response to Drew Desilver on the Pew Analysis Group (“What the data says about federal workers,” January 7, 2025). One instance of a small-employment company among the many small packing containers on the backside proper of the determine can be the US Division of Training, with fewer than 5,000 staff. However really substantial cuts in federal employment would require really substantial cuts from the large packing containers.
I’d not anticipate federal employment to be a relentless share of the US workforce. In spite of everything, a considerable a part of authorities work entails working with data, and the leaps and bounds of data know-how ought to make it attainable, in a broad sense, to perform related duties with fewer employees. Certainly, that appears to be the sample over time. The determine beneath takes the variety of federal staff and divides by complete staff within the US economic system. Again within the early Nineties, federal staff have been nearly 3% of the workforce. It’s now about 1.9% of the workforce–mainly the identical as earlier than the federal employent spikes from the Census and the pandemic recession. Additionally, once you have a look at federal employment relative to complete employment, the current bounce in federal jobs goes away; in different phrases, the final two years are a time when federal employment has been rising at about the identical price as complete employment, however not sooner.
In fact, these sorts of general numbers don’t supply proof that sure elements of the US authorities ought to have fewer employees, extra employees, or the identical quantity. The rise in federal employment in 2023-24 means that extra consideration may be paid to who was employed in what departments. The ratio of federal employment to complete employment means that we now have not seen (but) seen a radical break with previous federal employment patterns.
