Posted on 03/08/2010 5:47:40 AM PST by fruser1
Given all the talk of wanting a smaller government, I figured I'd look up how many government employees there are. I found this info rather easily but thought it was worth passing on.
These numbers are from 2008 data. The addition and percentages I performed myself:
Number of Full-Time Federal Employees - 2,518,101 Part-Time - 250,785 Full-Time State - 3,818,577 Part-Time - 1,451,002 Full-Time Local - 11,039,250 Part-Time - 3,383,976
TOTAL - 22,461,691
2008 US Population (est) - 304,059,724
% of Gov't employees - 7.38%
Inverse - 13.536
So this means that there's a government employee for every 13.5 people in the country.
Below are links to where I got this data. You can check out your own state-specific numbers there if you want.
http://www.census.gov/govs/apes/ http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
For State and Local data, I looked at the "US Summary Table" which explicitly lists full-time and part-time categories separately. For the Fed data, I had to subtract "full-time" from the "total" to get number of part-time employees above, as that table did not explicitly list the number of part-time employees.
About twice as much as there needs to be...............
What I want to know is — all the departments — Education, Labor, Interior — there are so many — how many in each department and what do all these people DO ALL DAY!!?!?!?!?!? That’s the real question.
The real secret is the number of contractors which could easily double your number.
They just told me that the Poist Office has less mail to deliver...and it’s been that way....but “0” layoffs to date.
Some lying scumbag from the government workers’ union wrote a letter to the WSJ a couple of weeks ago saying that the number of full time Federal government employees is the same as it was in Kennedy’s era (1.6 million if memory serves correctly). It was an obvious lie, but the WSJ published it anyway.
Too d@mn many.
My gag reflex is overstimulated.
The scientific term is T.N.C. aka Too Numerous to Count. lol
Just at the federal level did the charts indicate how many, if any, were military. I remember when clintoon cut the military he claimed credit for reducing federal employment.
Enough to start a medium-sized country somewhere
... actually, that’s a good idea ... they can all leave and start their own country.
OMG. That's oppressive, not to mention mega wasteful.
Our government needs a serious overhaul. Cut it by at least 90%.
This number needs to get around. People will be shocked to hear it (as much as I am right now).
And there never will be any. No matter how little the USPO does, it will continue to be an arm of the Democrat party.
How does the 13.5% compare to private employment? And does that include military personnel?
Bearing in mind that of the 300million people - a high percentage are dependent children and retired seniors.
OK, 13 work for me:
3 in department of defense
.25 of a marine
.25 of a coastguardsman naa, I live in Utah, scratch the coastie.
Prob one teacher
how about 1 VA worker.
I will take 25% of 1 police man (small rural town, that includes the sheriff too. reluctantly I will take 1/10% of the DMV folks.
This could be interesting....
.....Bob
Now get fancy. What percentage of working Americans is that? Does that drop your number to 6 for every government employee? 7? And the average American makes less than the average government worker if you factor for benefits and retirement. That should skew the number more.
TOTAL - 22,461,691
2008 US Population (est) - 304,059,724
A key statistic is the number of government workers divided by total workers.
That number is probably getting close to 20%
Bingo! Having been a former bureaucrat, I can tell you that the trend has been to expand the shadow workforce. The number of contractors working side by side with federal employees...doing the same work, has exploded.
Recently stories have come out about how govt employees make more on average than the average private sector person. We pay their salary, but also their bennies, their retirement pensions and a whole lot of other stuff they can work in from their buds in congress. And we are having to keep our budgets on the positive side while funding their existance. Ozero is on a huge hiring binge and all those fedgov employees suck more and more cash out of our lives. Then they are going to raise taxes on us to fund the new hires. Maybe this is obama’s army he spoke of. Thousands of federal employees that he can use for his own purposes.
Just thinking.
“Just at the federal level did the charts indicate how many, if any, were military.”
723,385 for Nat Defense/International Relations, if that helps you.
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