The federal government assigns around 3 million people, shaping it into the nation’s 15th largest workforce.
As of November 2024, over 3 million people were employed by the federal government. The number of federal employees has ascended to 3 million since September 2024, where the government could claim the similar number of employees during the last time in September 1994.
Federal employment numbers peaked at 3.4 million in 1990, and with 2.7 million, the most recent low was in 2014. Federal government employees are involved in departments or agencies housed under one of the three branches of government—executive, legislative, or judicial—though federal agencies are mostly under the federal executive branch. Among all US industries, it’s the 15th-largest workforce overall.
How many employees actually work for the government, including contractors?
That review of “The True Size of Government” conducted for The Volcker Alliance by researcher Paul Light prescribed that in 1984, there were more than 6.9 million people involved as civilians for the federal government, including contractors and grant employees. Through the addition of the military and postal workers, the figure jumped to 9.8 million.
A drawdown in the military was seen in the intervening years after the Cold War and then a buildup once again during the Global War on Terror. The study concluded providing data from 2015, when there were a total of 9.1 million employees, or 7.3 million excluding the military or postal service.
Sky-kissing expenditure of the federal government
The US expenditure for the federal government workforce was around $900 billion in 1984 ($2.7 trillion in 2024 dollars), compared with more than $7 trillion in 2024. Some of that money goes via contracts to the pocket of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who is working with Ramaswamy on the Department of Government Efficiency, a new non-governmental commission.
The national debt has more than exploded, swelling up from less than $1.6 trillion in 1984 ($4.8 trillion in 2024 dollars) to more than $35.5 trillion today, which should concern every American and is a substantial reason to make any effort to control federal spending.
Call off federal workers?
Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the two wealthy men, is tasked by President-elect Donald Trump with shrinking the size of the federal government.
The current effort, run by Ramaswamy and Musk, has made a show of eyeing the size of the federal workforce. One filtrated idea, according to reporters, is that they could recommend firing every federal worker hired in the last year.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the official tally from the Office of Personnel Management, the number of full-time federal workers has been relatively static, within a few hundred thousand civilians, since the 1960s.
How has the federal workforce gone through evolution?
During 1929 to 1945, the United States had been grappling with the Great Depression and World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the New Deal known in 1933, and over the next few years founded ample new federal agencies – agencies requiring people to activate them. Some agencies created during this period are still active, like the Social Security Administration and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The federal workforce tripled in size by 1945, while it was less than one million at the time of the beginning of data tracking in 1939.
By early 1948, employment had set back again by nearly 40%, to 1.88 million.
Federal employment continued to rise up throughout the 20th century, reaching a crest with 3.4 million employees in 1990, then contracting to 2.8 million in 1999. During the 2000s, it remained relatively constant.
Spikes in employment are due to the once-a-decade census, when the government hires etesian workers to conduct the survey; during the 2020 census, the number of federal employees increased from 2.9 million in January to 3.2 million in August. By December 2020, the figure returned to 2.9 million.
Between January and November of 2024, the number of federal employees increased by about 27,000 people.
Where do federal employees serve?
At the end of 2023, the government employed 3.0 million people, which is about 1.7% of the entire US workforce.
Around 2.3 million of them were full-time employees.
Federal offices consisting of the most personnel in 2023 were all military programs under the Defense Department (775,100 people), the Department of Veterans Affairs (433,700), and the Department of Homeland Security (212,000).
The Federal Trade Commission, National Labor Relations Board, National Credit Union Administration, and Civil Defense Programs had the fewest employees, with about 1,000 for each.
Concentration gradient of federal workers
Most federal employees are working in California (147,487), Virginia (144,483), and Maryland (142,876). Federal employees represent 0.8%, 3.3%, and 4.6% of these states’ total workforces, respectively.
High federal employment numbers in Virginia and Maryland are due to their proximity to Washington, DC.
As of March 2024, 26.4% of California federal employees worked in the Department of Veterans Affairs, and 23.5% worked in the Navy. The remaining 50.1% worked for the other agencies.
Washington, DC, has the highest number of federal employees (162,144), representing 43.3% of the District’s total workforce.
However, lower concentrations of federal workforce are available in California, Texas, Colorado, Alabama, and other states.
Concentrating on improving government might not mean shrinking it, according to Jenny Mattingley, vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service, which clinches for smarter government.
Federal employment figure’s comparison to other industries
The size of the federal workforce is comparatively similar to the information industry (publishing, broadcasting, telecommunications), which employs just over 3 million people. In consideration of size, the next-closest industry is education services, which includes schools, colleges, universities, and training centers, with approximately 3.8 million workers.
The federal workforce is relatively small as compared to the nation’s largest workforce: professional and business services, which includes scientific and technical services (including legal, accounting, advertising, and consulting), administrative and support services, corporate management, and waste management, employs 22.8 million people.
Healthcare and social assistance possessed the country’s second-largest employer (21.5 million people), and state and local government employment scored the third (19.9 million).
The federal workforce occupies larger than the utilities (575,500 people); mining (595,300); and agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting industries (1.46 million).
