Employment Trends - Trends In Government Employment

Government employs 13 out of every 100 people. In this and the next two panels, let's look more closely at government as an employer.

This chart shows how that employment, around 17.5 million people in 2000¹, breaks down into three major divisions: local, state, and federal. The largest of these, local government, includes municipal government at all sizes, counties, as well as special districts — school districts, above all, as well as water districts, sewage districts, port authorities, transportation districts, and the like. This largest sector has also had the most rapid growth in the last eight years, 1.7% a year on a compounded basis. The population grew at a rate of just shy of 1% (0.995) in the same period²; local government employment has thus outpaced population increase.

State government is smaller and had lower growth — 0.78% a year. There is one employee for every 2.69 people at the local level. Much as elementary and secondary education represents the bulk of local government employment, so employment by public colleges and universities represents the bulk of state government employment.

The federal government is the smallest government sector. There are six people employed at the state and local government level for each federal employee. Uniformed military forces are excluded here. Federal employment in this period has been going down, declining 1.5% a year. The two largest components of the federal government are civilian defense employees and the Postal Service.

Frustrated with taxes, especially in early Spring, bombarded by controversies in the media, Americans sometimes ask: Is government getting too big? Based on overall employment, government is 12.8% of employment, as noted above. The true size of the actual administrative apparatus, however, is revealed only when the educational establishment is first set apart. This is shown explicitly in the following table:

Analysis of Government and Public Education Employment (Data in thousands and in %)

	Total employment	Government employment	Employment in Public Education	Government Employment without Public Education	Govt. as % of total employment	Gov. without education as % of total
1992	110,408	16,178	6,021	10,158	14.7	9.2
1995	118,709	16,671	6,681	9,990	14.0	8.4
2000	136,492	17,504	7,375	10,128	12.8	7.4

These data show that government, without the inclusion of public education functions, is actually shrinking, down from 9.2% of total employment in 1992 to 7.4% in 2000. The educational component of government has increased by 1.35 million; government exclusive of education has essentially remained unchanged.

We continue to examine the larger components of government in the next panel.

Sources: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Public Employment and Payroll. Online. Available: http://www.census.gov/govs/www/apes.html. December 21, 2001. Total employment: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, augmented by data from U.S. Department of Defense, published in Statistical Abstract of the United State, 2000. Table 579, p. 368; military employment data estimated from 1998 data by the editors.