Your Federal Government: Big and Costly

Government employees now outnumber manufacturing workers in the United States by a margin of nearly two to one.  For decades local, state and federal governments have amassed an empire, reaching a staggering payroll of 21,995,000 last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While the government has claimed the title of the nation's biggest employer, manufacturing has shrunk.  Once a dominant sector, today there are only 12,329,000 Americans employed in manufacturing jobs. There are 1.8 government jobs for every one manufacturing worker.

This trend underscores the growth of government at every level.  Today there are more than 2.7 million federal workers, 5.02 million state employees and 14.1 million local wage earners.  That means there is one government worker for every 14.6 people living in the United States.

Despite the bloated government workforce numbers, employment has actually been falling at the state and local government level.  The Pew Research Center reports that state and local payrolls have dipped 290,500 during the period from January 2009 to December 2014.

During that same period, the federal government added 62,700 non-postal service jobs.  Pew researchers found the Postal Service reduced its workforce by 129,400 as mounting budget deficits forced the agency to squeeze its payroll.

The Obama Administration and its apparatchik media continue to claim that the federal government has not grown under the current president. They use sleight of hand by counting the reduction in Postal Service employees.   However, it is an independent agency of the federal government.

Three federal agencies accounted for the lion's share of the increase in employees.  They are the Department of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

Federal government jobs are among the highest paying positions in the nation.  Nearly 500,000 federal employees make $100,000 or more annually.  That represents 22 percent of all federal workers.  By comparison in 2006, only 12 percent of federal employees pocketed that much salary.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last year documented that the average annual pay for a federal worker reached $75,947 in 2012.  That is more than 63 percent higher than the current national average wage level of $46,481.

Wages paint only part of the compensation picture.  A Bureau of Economic Analysis study revealed that a federal worker in 2014 enjoyed average annual benefits of $35,781, compared to $10,896 for a private sector employee.

In total, federal government spending on pay and benefits increased by $51 billion, from $193.2 billion to $244.3 billion, from 2004 to 2012, the GAO report established. That represents a 26.4 percent increase during the eight-year period studied by the government watchdog agency.

Government worker pay and benefits gobble up about 14 percent of the total federal budget. However, the financial impact is understated because that does not include government pensions that add another $70 billion in costs annually, plus $13 billion in yearly retiree health care expenditures.
  
There are opportunities in the near future to trim federal employees and thus reduce the impact on the budget. By 2017, about 31 percent of federal employees will be eligible to retire, the GAO says.

Without resorting to layoffs, the federal government could scale back its workforce by simply choosing not to fill those retirement vacancies. But given the current climate in Washington, there is little enthusiasm for any change that bucks the status quo.

Bigger government equals more jobs that can be parceled out as political favors by the administration in power.  It is considered another patronage perk by both political parties.  For that reason alone, the federal bureaucracy will remain a Washington untouchable.