OpenFeds Analysis
Federal Workforce Trends: Is Government Right-Sized Now?
The federal workforce is the smallest it's been per-capita since before World War II. After eight decades of expansion punctuated by occasional drawdowns, are we finally at the right number — or have we cut too deep? The historical data provides essential context.
📜86 Years of Federal Workforce Size
Every generation thinks its government is uniquely bloated. The data tells a more nuanced story:
Pre-WWII baseline
WWII peak — wartime mobilization
Post-war drawdown
Cold War expansion
Great Society peak; Vietnam era
Post-Vietnam stabilization
Cold War final years
Clinton "Reinventing Government" cuts begin
Post-reinvention stabilization
Post-9/11 DHS creation; census year
Obama-era (executive branch only)
Pre-pandemic baseline
Peak — pandemic/IRA hiring surge
Post-DOGE restructuring
📈The Growth That Made Cuts Inevitable
Between 2016 and 2024, the federal workforce grew by nearly 200,000 employees — a 10% increase in eight years. This wasn't organic growth matching population increases. It was driven by legislation that created positions without asking whether existing capacity was sufficient.
The Inflation Reduction Act alone planned for 87,000 new IRS employees. The infrastructure bill added thousands of program managers. Pandemic-era emergency hiring became permanent. Each program had its own justification, but collectively they produced a federal workforce that was larger than it had been since the 1990s — without measurably better service delivery.
🌍How Does the U.S. Compare Globally?
Federal employees per 1,000 population — an imperfect but useful comparison:
Note: These figures count federal/national government employees only, not state/local. The U.S. delegates far more to state and local government than most countries, so direct comparison understates total U.S. public employment. Still, the trend is clear: the U.S. runs a relatively lean federal government by international standards — and post-DOGE, it's among the leanest in the developed world.
📋The Right-Sizing Scorecard
Is the government “right-sized” now? The answer depends on what you measure:
Federal employees per 1,000 population
✓ Lowest since pre-WWII
Manager-to-worker ratio
✓ Improving but still above private sector
IT systems per federal employee
✓ Technology should enable smaller workforce
Average age of federal worker
✓ Younger workforce after senior DRP exits
SSA claims processing time (days)
✗ Concerning — some cuts hit essential services
VA healthcare wait time (days)
✗ Modest increase — VA was largely protected
IRS phone wait time (minutes)
✗ Noticeable degradation in tax season
🎯Our Assessment
The federal workforce needed restructuring. That's not partisan — it's math. A 10% headcount increase over eight years with no measurable improvement in service delivery is the definition of bloat. Twenty-three percent of eliminated positions were already vacant. The manager-to-worker ratio was worse than any Fortune 500 company.
But right-sizing is not the same as across-the-board cutting. The data shows a clear pattern: structural improvements in workforce efficiency alongside pockets of genuine service degradation.
The cuts that made sense:
- Eliminating long-vacant positions (23% of cuts)
- Flattening management layers (manager ratio from 4.1:1 to 3.2:1)
- Consolidating redundant agency functions
- Reversing hiring surges that were never meant to be permanent (IRA, pandemic response)
The cuts that didn't:
- SSA field offices serving elderly Americans with no internet access
- VA claims processors already working backlogs
- GSA facility staff cut weeks before needing more facility capacity
- Wildfire response teams before wildfire season
The bottom line: the federal government is closer to right-sized than it was in 2024. But “right-sized” is a process, not a destination. Some overcorrections will need fixing. The important thing is that we're finally having a data-driven conversation about what government should look like — instead of just assuming every position is essential because it exists.
📚The Clinton Precedent
This isn't the first time the federal workforce was dramatically reduced. Between 1993 and 1999, the Clinton administration's “Reinventing Government” initiative eliminated approximately 350,000 federal positions — proportionally similar to the DOGE reductions.
At the time, critics predicted catastrophe. Federal employee unions protested. Media coverage was overwhelmingly negative. Sound familiar?
What actually happened: government services continued. The deficit turned into a surplus. The economy boomed. And today, almost no one argues those cuts should be reversed. The positions eliminated in the 1990s are now universally regarded as having been unnecessary.
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. The question isn't whether 256,000 cuts will be remembered as transformative or destructive — it's whether the execution was thoughtful enough to achieve the former. The data so far suggests: mostly yes, with notable exceptions.