Just on a lark I decided to look up USPS employment.
from http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCkQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usps.com%2Fpostalhistory%2F_pdf%2FEmployees1926to2009.pdf&rct=j&q=USPS%20total%20employment%20by%20year&ei=wpkoTp2QGIOxsAK8nqA7&usg=AFQjCNEdATFrpLtIiF8Xs7WYiawh9iAVpg&sig2=JNZNxR63wjO1p1lKUBOzEQ
(ugly isn’t it? it’s the link to download a pdf)
USPS total employment:
1964 440759
2009 623129
That’s roughly a 40% increase. So with a 58% increase in population, they have increased in productivity. Of course the increase is nothing like that of the private sector, but who’s counting. It is, however, a lot better than other civilian agencies.
Again, however, your claim that federal employment has been static since 1964 is proven to be deceptive.
It's been up over 600,000, and it's gone down from that.
The important characteristic is that PRODUCTIVITY ~ pieces of mail handled per employee ~ CLIMBED 700% from 1966 to 2004 (which is the part I'm responsible for).
Without the adoption of modern methods, intense use of computers to control every aspect of the business, and the use of OCR technology it couldn't have been done.
BTW, the Post Office Department was abolished and the United States Postal Service was created to do the job ~ without the use of tax dollars.
That's one of the reasons there are people who like to drop postal workers from the totals.