# Pop quiz: how much has the US government grown? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 21, 2014, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924 "2014-05-21T14:08:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/1 "2014-05-21T14:08:12Z")
This is a poll to see whether the perception of the growth of the federal bureaucracy matches reality. We are only talking about the increase in civilian employees of the executive branch, not the military and employees of the other branches. We’re going to compare today’s figures to 1962 because that’s the earliest date I found reliable data for. You can find the actual numbers [here](http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/) (first column). No peeking before voting! The percentage options reflect the size of the increase, obviously. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/2 "2014-05-21T14:09:44Z")
2 million for the feds, I say. Survey says… Pretty close! ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/3 "2014-05-21T14:12:03Z")
Sorry, the title and original version of the OP are misleading. We’re talking about how much the government has grown rather than how big it is in absolute terms. Edited text to indicate that, but if a mod could change the title to “how much has the US government grown?” that would be cool. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/4 "2014-05-21T14:20:12Z")
Well don’t I look stupid. I’m gonna take credit for a right answer anyway though because… Of course the government hasn’t grown very much. It should be obvious to anyone who has ever complained about long lines at the DMV (not federal employees, I know, but the comparison is easy to make). ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/5 "2014-05-21T14:22:40Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Sorry, the title and original version of the OP are misleading. We’re talking about how much the government has grown rather than how big it is in absolute terms. Edited text to indicate that, but if a mod could change the title to “how much has the US government grown?” that would be cool. Changed from “how big is the US government” to “how much has the US government grown?” —Ellen ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/6 "2014-05-21T14:23:22Z")
Interesting. I figured growth would’ve kept things about even with population growth. Turns out not so much. I guess it sort of makes sense, since the biggest jobs the gov’t does is keep track of paper and move money around (IRS filings, SS payments, regulatory filings, the mail) and those jobs have probably gotten a lot more labour efficient with computers. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/7 "2014-05-21T14:29:41Z")
> [@Ellen\_Cherry](#): > > Changed from “how big is the US government” to “how much has the US government grown?” > > —Ellen And thus I pronounce you cool. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/8 "2014-05-21T14:36:37Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > This is a poll to see whether the perception of the growth of the federal bureaucracy matches reality. We are only talking about the increase in civilian employees of the executive branch, not the military and employees of the other branches. We’re going to compare today’s figures to 1962 because that’s the earliest date I found reliable data for. I think it would be a challenge to come up with a measure that I’d think was accurate, for a number of different reasons. 1. Contracting out actual bureaucratic stuff. Need I mention that Edward Snowden wasn’t a government employee? But he was serving that function. 2. Contracting out non-bureaucratic stuff. In 1962, the janitorial staff for each government agency would have been directly employed by that agency or by GSA. Now they’re mostly if not entirely contracted out. 3. Massive reduction of clerical support staff. There used to be scads of secretaries and clerk-typists and file clerks who typed up what we bureaucrats wrote, and filed all the paperwork we produced. Now we type up our own stuff far faster than we could have handwritten it 50 years ago, and the ‘paperwork’ is ‘filed’ in folders on shared computer drives. By us, of course, and it only takes a second anyway. This list probably isn’t exhaustive, but it’s what I could think of off the top of my head. If you’re counting civilian employees of the Executive Branch, #1 means you’re not counting quite real growth in governmental activity. And #2 and #3 produce an illusory shrinkage in your counts. So I don’t think a straight ‘civilian employees of the Executive Branch, then and now’ comparison connects in a meaningful way with ‘how much has the government grown?’ ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/9 "2014-05-21T14:40:29Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Interesting. I figured growth would’ve kept things about even with population growth. Turns out not so much. > > I guess it sort of makes sense, since the biggest jobs the gov’t does is keep track of paper and move money around (IRS filings, SS payments, regulatory filings, the mail) and those jobs have probably gotten a lot more labour efficient with computers. This is what I thought as well – I figured the population had probably somewhat less than doubled in the last 50 years, so I made my increase accordingly. What I failed to realize was the growth in the number of federal contractors. Nearest I can tell, nobody tracks how many contractors they are, and if they did, it’d be nebulous anyway (my company, for example, has federal and non-federal contracts, so how would we get counted?). Nevertheless, I suspect that there has been a big increase in the size of the government, just not in terms of civilian employees. eta: Ninja’d by RT. He makes a more compelling argument anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/10 "2014-05-21T14:49:32Z")
It’s an interesting and perhaps non-intuitive outcome, but not a great measure if you want to talk about bigness of government. A better measure is to take a look at government spending as a percentage of GDP. By that measure, the government is bigger now than it was at any point since WWII (according to a 2008 estimate, that is, according to this graph I found on [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_gov_spending_history_1902_2010.png)). This measure includes federal and state spending, though, just to be clear. A lot of that spending goes to defense, of course, as [this graph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_gov_spending_histry_by_function_1902_2010.png)makes clear. [Comparatively speaking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_percentage_of_GDP), the US gov’t is smaller than the governments of most rich industrial countries, but only slightly smaller (41.9 % v. 41.6 %) than Canada’s. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/11 "2014-05-21T14:50:55Z")
There’s an interesting analysis of federal contracting numbers [here](http://www.pogo.org/our-work/letters/2013/20130415-feds-vs-contractors-cost-comparison.html). It sort of stands to reason that the feds wouldn’t know how many actual people are doing their work through federal contractors because they don’t hire the people, they simply farm out the _task_. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/12 "2014-05-21T15:11:52Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > There’s an interesting analysis of federal contracting numbers [here](http://www.pogo.org/our-work/letters/2013/20130415-feds-vs-contractors-cost-comparison.html). It sort of stands to reason that the feds wouldn’t know how many actual people are doing their work through federal contractors because they don’t hire the people, they simply farm out the _task_. That’s probably true for OPM, but the Dept of Labor might want to keep stats. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/13 "2014-05-21T16:16:59Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > A better measure is to take a look at government spending as a percentage of GDP. By that measure, the government is bigger now than it was at any point since WWII (according to a 2008 estimate, that is, according to this graph I found on [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_gov_spending_history_1902_2010.png)). That graph includes transfer payments (e.g. Social Security and Medicare) which have risen dramatically, in part due to the Baby Boom demographic. Many economists exclude such transfers when considering the “size of government.” For one thing, SocSec money is spent by retirees, not government. The graph is misleading for another reason: it ends with the spending surge associated with the Credit Crisis of 2008. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/14 "2014-05-21T16:24:29Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > That graph includes transfer payments (e.g. Social Security and Medicare) which have risen dramatically, in part due to the Baby Boom demographic. Many economists exclude such transfers when considering the “size of government.” For one thing, SocSec money is spent by retirees, not government. It’s a fair point, although I’m not sure I see why the Social security money is so special in that regard - it’s spent by the govt as part of the federal (I think, but i’m not from the US myself) budget and received by retirees, who in turn spend it on hookers and blow and other necessities. The same can be said for all of the federal payroll - but that’s still a legit part of government expenditure. > [@](#): > > The graph is misleading for another reason: it ends with the spending surge associated with the Credit Crisis of 2008. That does not make the graph misleading, it’s just incomplete but it does not purport to go beyond 2008. You’re welcome to come up with more complete information but I think the point that the statistic of Gov’t expenditure as part of GDP paints a different and likely better picture of gov’t size than the number of federal employees is supported by the data that I’ve offered. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/15 "2014-05-21T16:33:46Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > The graph is misleading for another reason: it ends with the spending surge associated with the Credit Crisis of 2008. Not to mention the hit to GDP that the 2008-09 recession and its long aftermath have caused. Over the past 5+ years, the problem has been more with the denominator (GDP) than with the numerator (government spending). ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/16 "2014-05-21T16:57:51Z")
I took the tack of realizing that since the right-wingers are always complaining about the explosive growth of the gov’t, it must have in reality actually shrunk, and the Executive Branch would have been shrunk accordingly. That wasn’t an option, so I picked the lowest growth value. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/17 "2014-05-21T17:56:00Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > It’s a fair point, although I’m not sure I see why the Social security money is so special in that regard - it’s spent by the govt as part of the federal (I think, but i’m not from the US myself) budget and received by retirees, who in turn spend it on hookers and blow and other necessities. The same can be said for all of the federal payroll - but that’s still a legit part of government expenditure. Federal payroll comes from the Treasury. SS comes from a (nominally) different pool of funds. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/18 "2014-05-21T18:06:45Z")
It’s bizarre to talk about “how much has the US government grown” in terms of just people. Most, if not all, of the people who have a problem with the ever increasing size of the government are complaining about the growth of spending, not headcount. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/19 "2014-05-21T18:15:45Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > Most, if not all, of the people who have a problem with the ever increasing size of the government are complaining about the growth of spending, not headcount. This isn’t supposed to be a debate. Just an experiment. That said, tell it to [this guy](http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2013/12/how-many-supervisors-does-government-need/75011/). Or [this dude](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704206804575467642879738582?mod=googlenews_wsj&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052748704206804575467642879738582.html%3Fmod%3Dgooglenews_wsj). Or [these guys](http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2466363/posts). And all the people [this guy](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gop-too-many-feds-and-they-are-paid-too-much/2012/08/29/e6543418-f207-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html) mentions. All of [these people](https://www.facebook.com/Rand2016/posts/458109574304246). And especially [this fellow](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/16/296220/with-government-job-losses-holding-back-recovery-romney-promises-to-slash-even-more/), who you may be familiar with. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/20 "2014-05-21T18:39:04Z")
I voted the first, but my guess was going to be that it actually shrunk a bit. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924.md?page=2)