Two seemingly contradictory things are true when it comes to federal pay.
For one, the Biden administration has ramped up hiring and expanded the government workforce at the fastest pace since the 1980s. Second, as a proportion of total employment, it remains near an all-time low.
In the four years between President Trump's two terms, the number of civilian employees in the federal government increased by about 4.4% to just over 3 million people, including the Postal Service, according to the Department of Labor.
However, this is a much slower pace than the growth in civilian salaries over the past four years. Additionally, the federal government's share of total employment remained at 1.9%, down from over 3% in the 1980s.
The next administration promises to eliminate the entire federal bureaucracy. Vivek Ramaswamy said 75% of the workforce could leave to pursue his next goal after being named co-chair of what Trump calls the Department of Government Efficiency. The reduction is $2 trillion. (Mr. Ramaswamy is stepping back to pursue a run for governor of Ohio.)
As a first step, Trump issued an executive order on Monday implementing a hiring freeze across the federal government.
But finding cuts without degrading service will be difficult.
“If you look at the federal workforce, it's still about the same size as it was in the 1960s,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service think tank. “While there is a narrative out there that the federal workforce is in disarray, the reality is that it is shrinking.”
Staffing levels expanded by about 2.9% during Trump's first term. However, the latest data released by the Office of Personnel Management reveals that although some government agencies have contracted significantly, they have recovered as of March 2024.
The State Department, which has shrunk due to layoffs and a hiring freeze imposed by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, grew its staff by about 20 percent from 2020 to early 2024, or about 2,300 people, excluding the Foreign Service. (Some of the increase reflects passport processors, whose numbers have declined as few people have traveled internationally during the pandemic.) The U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers public health and humanitarian grants abroad, said 23 % increase to 4,675 people. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security, has returned to 22,500 employees after a hiring freeze and funding shortfall, the highest level in the agency's history.
Other government agencies seeing increases in staff numbers were spurred by some of the Biden administration's legislative initiatives, particularly the bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Suppressing Inflation Act. Recruiters streamlined the hiring process and hired more than 9,000 people spread across law agencies.
The Internal Revenue Service received an $80 billion injection (later cut to $40 billion), and the Treasury Department also expanded, with staff numbers topping 100,000, the highest since 1997.
But the biggest increase was at the largest government agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, with more than 486,000 employees, an increase of nearly 16 percent from 2020. This growth was driven by the PACT Act, a law that authorized $797 billion in spending in 2022. Provides additional coverage for veterans exposed to toxic substances during military service.
The Department of Veterans Affairs accounts for 1.25 million federal employees, including civilian employees in the Department of Defense and military departments. This is equivalent to 55% of the total, excluding intelligence agencies and the Postal Service. The number of active duty military personnel has increased by approximately 1.4 million, which is a decrease from 2020.
“We can't achieve $2 trillion in cuts and 75 percent of the federal workforce if we're not going to cut the Pentagon,” said Randy Irwin, national president of the American Federation of Federal Employees, referring to the Pentagon. . “It's so big that it's impossible to reach that number.”
Hiring at VA hospitals and field offices to support infrastructure projects means that all of the growth in federal employment has occurred outside of Belt and Road. The number of federal employees in the Washington metropolitan area has remained flat since 2020, at about 12% of the total.
Some of that stems from the remote work trend, which has allowed agencies to hire specialized talent elsewhere in the country. Salaries vary by region, but federal employees earn nearly 25 percent less than private sector employees in each occupation, according to the Federal Salary Council.
“We're hearing from district recruiters that they're having a really hard time attracting workers, especially for technical jobs,” said Terry Clower, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University in Northern Virginia. he said. “That’s because many people are reluctant to move to our region, where living costs are high, to earn federal wages.”
Of course, the size of the federal government is not measured by salaries alone. The number of people working in federal jobs as employees of federal contractors is rapidly increasing as policymakers seek to keep staffing levels low. Scholars at the Brookings Institution estimated that there were 5 million contract workers in 2020.
