4 ms·
"Federal civilian employment is at roughly where it was in the late 1960's" That OPM report is demonstrably misleading. It doesn't include contract employees
by pmorici 13y ago
"Federal civilian employment is at roughly where it was in the late 1960's"
That OPM report is demonstrably misleading. It doesn't include contract employees which have been increasing since the 80's and have ballooned in the past decade. OPM doesn't keep numbers on the number of contractors. It's also been shown that a contract employee gets paid almost double what a civil servant does for doing the same exact job.[0] Some studies estimate that federal government contractors out number civil servant employees 4 to 1.[1]
Politicians love this because it allows them to say they are holding the line on the size of the federal government in terms of federal employees while it is actually increasing in common sense terms.
[0] http://www.pogo.org/our-work/reports/2011/co-gp-20110913.html http://www.pogo.org/our-work/reports/2011/co-gp-20110913.htm...
[1]http://wagner.nyu.edu/performance/files/True_Size.pdf http://wagner.nyu.edu/performance/files/True_Size.pdf
- rayiner 13y agoIt's not any more misleading than counting a guy assembling Humvees or a doctor working on an NIH grant as being employed by the government, and then throwing around figures like 5-7 million additional contractor employees. Moreover, even according to your link the "true size" of government is shrinking relative to the population. Your source estimates the "true size" of government at 12.6 million in 1990 and 14.6 million in 2005. That's a 16% increase, during a period when U.S. population grew 20% (from 250 million to 300 million), and real GDP grew 63%. And that's a number that reflects the peak of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, and will decrease as we exit those wars. Finally, at the end of the day, those contractors are paid out of discretionary expenditures, which are on a long-term downward trend as a percentage of GDP. Your source says: "All of the increase in contract employees is due to increased spending at the Department of Defense." This is the chart of defense spending as a percentage of GDP: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/US_defense_spending_by_GDP_percentage_1910_to_2007.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/US_defens...
- pmorici 13y ago"It's not any more misleading than counting a guy assembling Humvees or a doctor working on an NIH grant" Right which is the problem with all numbers seeking to quantify the size of government by a count of the employees. Since good numbers aren't available on the number of contractors that are de facto civil service employees vs employed by an entity that operates autonomously and provides a product to the government. I don't dispute your argument in terms of dollar amounts.