Is the Federal Workforce Too Big?

📉The Headcount Myth

The federal civilian workforce peaked at 3.1 million in 1990. In 1960, it was 2.4 million. Today, it stands at roughly 2.07 million. Meanwhile, the U.S. population grew from 180 million to 340 million and the economy expanded 25x.

As a share of the total U.S. workforce, the federal government is a third the size it was in 1960. The 'bloated bureaucracy' narrative doesn't survive contact with the data.

The federal workforce hasn't kept pace with population or economic growth. Whether that's a sign of efficiency or under-investment depends on your priors. But the raw headcount argument — "too many bureaucrats" — doesn't hold up.

💸Spending Per Employee

Here's where the story changes. While headcount shrank, total federal spending exploded. The 1.43M civilian employees in our dataset administer roughly $11.0 trillion in budget authority. That's a staggering amount of spending per person.

Some agencies channel enormous budgets through tiny workforces. Here are the agencies with the highest budget authority per employee:

The Treasury Department channels $41M in budget authority per employee. Whether fewer people managing more money is a feature or a bug depends entirely on whether oversight keeps up.

👻The Shadow Workforce

The 2.07 million federal employees are only part of the story. Estimates of the federal contractor workforce range from 4 to 9 million, depending on how you count. For every federal employee, there are 3–4 people doing government work on contract.

The contractor workforce grew precisely because of headcount caps. Politicians could claim a "lean" government while spending far more on contractors who are harder to track, less accountable, and often more expensive than federal employees doing the same work.

Cutting federal employees without cutting the work doesn't shrink government. It just moves the payroll to contractors who cost more and answer to shareholders, not taxpayers.

In our dataset, federal agencies spent $813 billion on contracts alone. The Department of Defense leads with $491B in contract obligations — see the spending breakdown.

🏛️Agency Staffing: Who's Actually Big?

The federal workforce isn't evenly distributed. A handful of agencies account for the vast majority of employees. The Department of Veterans Affairs alone has 451,121 employees — mostly doctors, nurses, and support staff caring for 18 million veterans. The military-affiliated civilian workforce (Army, Navy, Air Force, DoD) adds another 707,000+.

Together, these mission-critical agencies account for roughly two-thirds of the federal workforce. The remaining third includes everything from the IRS to the National Park Service to NASA. Agencies like the Department of Education (2,453 employees) and the EPA (14,661) are tiny by comparison.

Explore the full landscape on the agencies dashboard or see how the DOGE restructuring reshaped each agency on the DOGE Impact page.

⚖️The Real Question

The debate over federal workforce size has been stuck in a false binary for decades. "Too many bureaucrats" vs. "essential public servants." The data tells a more complicated story.

The headcount isn't the problem. Federal civilian employment is at a 60-year low relative to the workforce. The real problems are:

• Spending per employee has grown far faster than the workforce, with less oversight per dollar.
• The contractor workforce is 3–4x the civilian headcount and far harder to audit.
• Performance management barely exists — firing underperformers is nearly impossible, so dead weight accumulates.
• Mission creep means agencies take on new functions without shedding old ones.

DOGE's approach of cutting positions is a blunt instrument. But the alternative — doing nothing — has failed for 40 years. The real question isn't headcount, it's whether each position creates value.

The data is clear: across-the-board cuts hit essential services (workforce trends) just as hard as bloated bureaucracies. Surgical reform beats indiscriminate slashing — but it also requires the political will to make specific, defensible choices. Explore the DOGE impact and spending data to draw your own conclusions.