You are correct. Postal employees were not included in that 2 million. Though it is an OPM number. Finding a sensible defined count was a chore. One count took it up to almost 14 million!
As far as efficiency, I maintain that all government entities should eliminate at least one complete layer of organization and two layers of management. And I mean rip them out, eliminating the positions. The bloat adds no value and is counterproductive.
Such is the nature of government bureaucracy. That’s one reason why we should keep the government beast at the edge of starvation.
But it’s like shouting in a hurricane.
Yep years ago a coworker said the only way to prevent government growth is to limit the money. In the small organization I’m in we have 2 leaders in case one is deployed which has never happened. We have 5 admin people doing what 2 use to do and at higher grades. We have 4 Jr officers and I have no idea what they do. We have a virtual platoon of environmental types finding ways to prevent work getting done. I was told our HQs has 600 people by visiting HQ types, which explains all the meaningless data requests I get. I’m embarrassed to tell what their 5 day trip was about. I could have provided the info and sent it to them. Of course they’ll be visiting several other bases. Somebody referred to it as Operation Enduring Per Diem. The amount of money we waste is just staggering.