# 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:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/21 "2014-05-21T18:42:01Z")
Since I have no idea whatsoever, I relied on the old “this must be some sort of trick question” principle. I chose 0-10%. ---
**Author:** ![protoboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@protoboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/protoboard)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/22 "2014-05-21T18:48:20Z")
So the government’s actually shrunk a bit since the late 1980s. That doesn’t surprise me, being that since around that time is when small government became a hot thing. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/23 "2014-05-21T18:58:28Z")
> [@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. No, actually I think it is more an issue of the regulatory burden. Relatively few people object to the federal government spending money on special education or low income students. A great many people object to the federal government being involved in setting curriculum standards or requiring equal spending on girls and boys athletics (when the local school wants to spend more money on boy’s football)… ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/24 "2014-05-21T19:07:18Z")
Honestly, I wish the question was phrased better. Without looking at the linked cite, I really would have no way to assess what methods we were using to count. This is particularly a problem because of the question in the title of this thread (how much “the government” has grown) is not the same as what’s being asked in the body of the OP (how much a certain classification of employee in a single branch of one government has grown.) Ultimately, the answer doesn’t surprise me. I already know that the IRS’s employment numbers have been dwindling for quite some time thanks to things like e-filing where technology and automation take care of so much work. But then I’m not even sure if the IRS is counted as part of the employment numbers we’re talking about. Solyndra employees were certainly not counted as federal employees, but hundreds of millions in federal money made those jobs possible. If we’re talking “size of government” then that needs to count somewhere. Is it a “small government” if 10 employees control $100 trillion worth of independent contractors? ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2014, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/25 "2014-05-22T19:10:10Z")
Another big factor might be the Post Office. I don’t know if all postal employees were considered part of the executive branch in 1962, but the Postmaster General was a Cabinet post then. They no longer are government employees. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2014, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/26 "2014-05-22T19:28:38Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > 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. In the early 1990s, I visited Johnson Space Center for business. Some of the people there noted that they were formerly government employees but with the push by the Reagan administration to reduce the size of government, their jobs were outsourced to a federal contractor. So the same people were doing the same job, except now they were working for a private company. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2014, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/27 "2014-05-22T19:33:06Z")
While This is not up to the current year: Year Military Leg/Jud DoD Exec USPS SUM 1962 2840 30 1070 827 589 5354 1965 2687 32 1034 867 595 5215 1970 3104 38 1219 983 741 6085 1975 2164 49 1042 1107 699 5061 1980 2090 55 960 1201 660 4965 1985 2190 58 1107 1145 756 5256 1990 2106 61 1034 1216 817 5234 1995 1555 62 802 1210 846 4475 2000 1426 63 651 1127 861 4129 2005 1436 65 649 1224 764 4138 2006 1432 63 653 1227 757 4133 2007 1427 63 651 1237 748 4127 > **[Federal Government Employees by Group, Military vs Civilian - 1962 to 2007](http://www.freeby50.com/2012/09/federal-government-employees-by-group.html)** > > The other day I talked about how federal government and government employment in general has been on the decline recently.   I showed the tr... Note the figures include the civilian employees of the Department of Defense. There has been a massive decline in these numbers from 1,070,000 in 1962 to 651,000 in 2007. This is due to 1. the decline in size of the military and 2. contracting out. If you take out this figure government employment has increased. Employment figures for the executive branch (excluding DOD and USPS) have risen from 827,000 in 1962 to 1,237,000 in 2007. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2014, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/28 "2014-05-22T20:16:56Z")
Did you happen to notice that the OP included a link to the same numbers, except on the OPM website and up to 2012? ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2014, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/29 "2014-05-22T23:33:32Z")
A couple of inches. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2014, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/30 "2014-05-24T14:56:55Z")
Is this one of those “Obama is the most frugal President since Calvin Coolidge” type statistic? It’s really pretty simple. The budget in 1962 had just topped $100 billion. Today it is $3.7 trillion. This inflation calculator [http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100&year1=1962&year2=2014](http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100&year1=1962&year2=2014) shows that if the government had kept up with inflation, the budget this year would be $785 billion. Short answer: It has grown tremendously unless we want to play number games. ---
**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 24, 2014, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924/31 "2014-05-24T15:33:11Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > Is this one of those “Obama is the most frugal President since Calvin Coolidge” type statistic? Not at all. As I pointed out above, people complain about the number of federal employees nearly as much as they complain about the budget. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-quiz-how-much-has-the-us-government-grown/688924.md?page=1)