Elon Musk’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) has been making quite a lot of noise about all of the federal workers it plans to fireplace. The DOGE folks have framed whole federal employment as one thing of a proxy for the full dimension of the federal authorities. Reducing the federal workforce is all properly and good, however in actuality, the scale of the federal payrolls doesn’t actually inform us a lot in regards to the development of the federal authorities.
Federal employment has been flat for many years. If the full variety of federal employees was an excellent proxy for federal energy, we’d be pressured to conclude that the federal authorities has shrunk 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 the general public paid to do issues by the federal authorities will not be precise federal workers. Most federally funded employees are actually 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 discuss federal employment is usually theater. That is demonstrated in how DOGE spokesmen inform us how laborious it will likely be to fireplace federal workers with civil service protections. That’s, the DOGE individuals are already explaining to us why they received’t be capable of lower federal employment—most likely in order that they have an excuse for why so little of the federal work drive will really go away over the subsequent 4 years.
If Trump’s folks 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 full variety of federal workers. With out federal contracts and federal grants, these workers go away. Wringing our arms about what number of civil service employees there are is usually a distraction when the true 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 employees, together with postal employees. These are the individuals who generally acknowledge as “civil service” employees who’re straight employed by authorities companies. 2023’s whole is down from 1990 when the full variety of federal employees was 3.1 million. What development we do see in authorities employment comes from state and native employees. Together with authorities employees in any respect ranges, authorities employment continued to develop quickly even after 1990 when federal employment peaked. But, even by this measure, whole authorities employment has been largely flat.
Certainly, on a per capita foundation, whole 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 drastically understates the fact, and never simply because these totals don’t embody navy 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 properly past the civil service employees that DOGE claims to be so apprehensive about. Somewhat, we have to take 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 employees was greater than 9 million:
The federal authorities employs practically 9.1 million employees, comprising practically 6 p.c of whole employment in the US. The determine contains practically 2.1 million federal workers, 4.1 million contract workers, 1.2 million grant workers, 1.3 million energetic responsibility navy personnel, and greater than 500,000 postal service workers. … many taxpayers might not notice they’re moreover subsidizing a ballooning shadow authorities of some 5.3 million contract and grant workers. Whereas politicians usually 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 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 p.c of that workforce for the reason that Nineteen Eighties.”
One other examine from the Brookings establishment exhibits how the blended jobs drastically 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, in fact, are in every single place. The ranks of aerospace engineers, Silicon Valley companies, and the “tech sector” generally is closely populated with thousands and thousands of employees who’re de facto federal workers.
Now we have no cause 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 thousands and thousands of recent 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 through the Trump years, and it ought to shock nobody that the development continued unabated by way 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 navy spending. Trump has all the time been keen about working up large new deficits and spending totals as long as it goes to the Pentagon.
The Pentagon, in fact, simply failed its seventh audit in a row and has no concept how its cash is spent. However, 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 employees.
Simply Reduce Spending
Reducing the federal work drive doesn’t require any ornate arguments in regards to the civil service or what number of federal workers do business from home. If the Trump administration is severe about reducing the federal workforce, it should concentrate on merely reducing federal spending. If federal spending falls considerably, thousands and thousands of employees paid by federal contracts and grants should be part of the personal sector. Furthermore, thousands and thousands of state and native authorities jobs will disappear as properly, provided that lots of them are basically federally funded positions. It’s not likely any extra sophisticated than that.