How many employees in federal bureaucracy

The other half of employment is spread throughout the remaining agencies, including the Departments of Justice and Agriculture. See table 2. The federal government hires workers with broad levels of education and experience. OPM establishes minimum qualifications by occupation or job. The federal government uses a few different systems to classify jobs.

For example, the Federal Wage System classifies jobs in trade, craft, and other blue-collar occupations. But the most common is the General Schedule GS system. Under this system, agencies assign each job a GS grade from 1 to 15 based on job duties and qualifications. Jobs at GS or above may be supervisory or managerial positions. Others, such as museum curators, require a degree in a specific major or designate a minimum number of credits in a particular subject area. And in some cases, having more education or experience than a position requires may qualify applicants for a higher GS grade—and higher pay.

To help offset higher living costs, the federal government includes a premium, called locality pay, for employees who work in 34 urban areas.

This premium provides a percentage-based increase over the base pay. There are 10 steps at each grade level. Step increases are accompanied by a small bump in pay. Along with salaries or wages, employee compensation in the federal government include benefits, such as subsidized health insurance.

Federal workers choose government employment for many reasons; some of these are job security and the opportunity to serve the public. But, like any job, federal work has rewards and challenges.

One of the biggest draws of federal work is the chance to make a positive difference, which workers say is a source of pride.

Satisfaction often comes from knowing that they are helping and serving people in their roles as public employees. Another appeal to working for the government is job security. Many federal services—including national security, emergency response, and air traffic control—are essential and ongoing.

For this reason, federal workers may feel they have greater job stability than private-sector employees. The federal government also offers benefits such as low-cost life insurance and paid vacation and sick leave that begin accruing on the first day of work.

Some agencies allow flexible work arrangements, such as alternative schedules. And, when funding is available, agencies may pay for workers to get additional education, such as a professional certificate or graduate degree.

For many workers, the biggest challenge of federal work is its bureaucracy: the sheer size of the federal government makes it difficult for agencies to act independently. The vastness of the government contributes to another commonly cited challenge: the complexity of the hiring process.

The federal government numbers include active duty military personnel and U. Postal Service workers. There are approximately , postal workers. Contrary to popular belief in the bloated growth of the U. It has also shrunk in absolute numbers in terms of both the full-time and part-time workforce. If we compare the size of the U. In Europe, the optimal size of government is equally hotly debated, while in Russia, the size of the government and the dependency that this generates within the workforce tends to mute critical commentary.

The federal government is primarily associated with Washington, D. There are federal civilian employees—not just the uniformed military and postal workers—in every state of the union dealing with healthcare, education, housing, disaster management, securing our borders, coastline and waterways, forecasting the weather, protecting and ensuring our food supply, maintaining and staffing national parks, bolstering small businesses, as well as delivering the mail.

An October Pew poll showed consistently high support for the government continuing to undertake all of these functions. Other polls in recorded high levels of public anxiety about the consequences of the —19 government shutdown.

The government shutdown—35 days from December 22, to January 25, —was the longest in U. It put , employees from nine federal government departments either on furlough or compulsory work without pay.

Around 4 million contractors were similarly affected. The shutdown had significant knock-on effects as federal grants, vital loans for small businesses, and Internal Revenue Service rebate checks were delayed, small companies dependent on U. Coast Guard were compelled to work without compensation. The —19 shutdown underscored that the majority of U. This stands in stark contrast to another set of frequent charges that public servants are part of an unaccountable privileged elite that benefits from higher wages and job security and forms an almost untouchable caste within the country.

It is certainly the case that public servants are not elected and, therefore, cannot be held accountable and removed from office by voters in the same way as elected government officials.

But, public sector employees are recruited on the basis of specific knowledge and expertise from the broader population. Public sector employees at the local and state levels reflect the overall American workforce.

They are also subject to frequent performance reviews and formal oversight. Absent a steady pipeline of committed employees, federal managers and supervisors have little choice but to call for help. The employees who show up are often well-qualified for the work, but they cannot take higher-level posts without breaching the dividing line.

They also create dependency that managers and supervisors cannot easily break. As older employees move across the steps and up the ladder, they pull lower-level employees across and up, too. Promotion speed can be used to battle employment caps, cuts, and freezes through backdoor pay increases but also can give federal employees the titles and prestige to stay put, despite the opportunity for higher-paying positions in contract or grant positions. Supervisors use constant upgrades as a retention strategy, especially for employees in technical and hard-to-fill positions.

It also encourages the use of contract and grant employees to backfill vacated posts. All Above Average The federal performance appraisal system was designed to rate and reward employee contributions to department and agency goals.

In theory, the system would provide the guidance needed for disciplined reviews and maximum improvement. In reality, the guidance is so fuzzy and the discipline so weak that federal employees are almost all above average. In , 45 percent of SES members were ranked at the highest level of performance and another 44 percent were ranked just below. Although the SES attracts many of the most talented employees in the world, its appraisal system is widely disparaged—even ridiculed—and suggests that performance ratings and actual performance are loosely coupled.

Many federal employees appear to share the assessment. In , for example, just 41 percent said awards depended on how well employees performed their jobs, 34 percent said differences in performance with their work units were recognized in a meaningful way, and 29 percent said steps were taken to deal with a poor performer who cannot or will not improve.

Federal employees are right to dispute the link between performance and discipline. They can be fired, but the process takes time, careful documentation, and persistence. According to a analysis by the US Government Accountability Office GAO , the process can take from to days, depending on the statutory authority used to support the dismissal.

In that reform you need to one, address poor performers and two, address skills that become outdated from otherwise good performers. There are just simply way too many hoops. Demography and history come together to reshape the federal hierarchy—employees grow older, missions expand and contract, personnel policies shift, new technologies emerge, and jobs evolve.

The changes are easy to track with the number of technical, administrative, clerical, and blue-collar positions at any given point in history. The big story overall is that federal employment has hovered around two million workers, but spending, after inflation, has risen sharply. The same number of federal employees is leveraging an ever-growing amount of money, This is not to suggest that the federal government still employs large numbers of couriers and stenographers—those jobs are gone for good.

However, the data suggest that the federal government still employees its fair share of lawnmowers, mapmakers, statisticians, accountants, repair specialists, and cafeteria workers.

Their checks may not come directly from the Treasury, but they will help the federal government execute the laws until Silicon Valley invents an app for that. The federal government may not know precisely how many employees work in this hidden pyramid, but it does know that millions of employees show up every day to do work once performed by federal employees. The decision to separate these employees from the federal headcount perpetuates the conceit that government can do more with less ad infinitum, and encourages departments and agencies to create their own systems for managing the workload.

As the National Academy of Public Administration recently concluded, the absence of reform has produced chaos:.

Among its many problems, the current civil service system is no longer a system. It is mired in often-arcane processes established after World War II, in the days before the Internet, interstate highways, or an interconnected global economy. Pursuit of those processes, many now largely obsolete, has become an end in itself, and compliance with them has tended to come at the expense of the missions they were supposed to support.

As a result, the federal civil service system has become a non-system: agencies that have been able to break free from the constraints of the outmoded regulations and procedures have done so, with the indulgence of their congressional committees. Many of the demographic problems discussed above affect skill sets such as cybersecurity, telecommunications, acquisitions, information management, and even project planning. The GAO put the gap between demand and supply for mission-critical positions on its high-risk list in This erosion in the attractiveness of public service at all levels—most specifically in the federal civil service—undermines the ability of government to respond effectively to the needs and aspirations of the American people, and ultimately damages the democratic process itself.

Now, after 30 years and another demand for action by a second Volcker Commission, most departments and agencies are still struggling to implement effective policy. In turn, employee empowerment and the inspiration for change are the two major drivers of engagement. Employees must have confidence that their organization will provide them with the resources and opportunity to succeed.

Engagement did increase between and , but by just one percent. Start with the FEVS questions about empowering employees. According to the survey, less than half of respondents were satisfied with the information they received from management 48 percent , had sufficient resources to do their jobs 47 percent , felt personally empowered with respect to work processes 45 percent , believed their organization recruited people with the right skills 43 percent , worked in units where employee performance was recognized in a meaningful way 34 percent , thought their work units took steps to deal with poor performers who could not or would not improve 29 , and said pay raises depended on how well employees do their jobs 22 percent.

Turn next to the FEVS questions about inspiring change. According to the survey, less than half of respondents were recognized for providing high-quality products and services 48 percent , felt acknowledged for doing a good job 48 percent , were satisfied with the policies and practices of their senior leaders 42 percent , worked for leaders who generated high levels of motivation and commitment 41 percent , felt rewarded for their creativity and innovation 38 percent , believed they had the opportunity to get a better job in their organization 36 percent , and thought promotions were based on merit 32 percent.

Despite their concerns, the respondents were generally positive about their own performance on the job. Substantial majorities said they were ready to put in the extra effort to get the job done 92 percent , were held accountable for results 82 percent , were judged fairly on performance 70 percent , had a sense of personal accomplishment at work 72 percent , were satisfied with their jobs 66 percent , would recommend their organization as a good place to work 64 percent , and were encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing things 58 percent.

In a sentence, federal employees believe they create impact every day but that they must do so against the odds. On the one hand, both groups of employees expressed similar levels of confidence in their opportunity to improve their skills, in their belief that performance appraisals were fair, in their access to information, and in their feeling of personal accomplishment.

On the other hand, the private sector employees were more positive than federal employees on all twenty-five of the comparison questions, with particularly significant gaps on eight items:. Private sector employees might not have had such fulsome praise for their organizations and leaders if they worked under the same stresses as federal employees.

The federal mission is broad but sometimes poorly specified, the customer base is often divided, the board is almost perfectly designed to split, funding is taut, and political pressures are undeniable. The disparities help explain the empowerment denied and the change dismissed in government.

Contract and grant employees are often promoted as a low-cost alternative to federal employees, but the data suggest quite the opposite. Federal employees may seem more expensive than contract and grant employees on average but may be much less expensive than contract employees when compared occupation by occupation.

The research was designed to challenge the long-standing assumption that the federal government saves money when it hires contract employees in lieu of federal employees. The explanation is in billing rates, not paychecks: Contract employees are less expensive only until overhead—or indirect costs such as supplies, equipment, materials, and other costs of doing business—enter the equation.

Add overhead to the totals, and contract employees can cost twice as much as federal employees. If the issue is how to reduce taxpayer burdens, federal employees were often the better option:. However, in the 35 occupational classifications and specific jobs POGO analyzed, reliance on contractor employees costs significantly more than having federal employees provide similar services.

As a result, taxpayers are left paying the additional costs associated with corporate management, overhead, and profits that the government has no need to incur. The conventional wisdom regarding the cost of contracting was not shaken. The contracting industry denied the findings and rebutted the methodology. Yet as a decision-making tool, averaging has little value or relevance since it offers no perspective or insight.

Even if one assumes the baseline data is complete and accurate, all the POGO report shows is that sometimes contracting is more expensive than government performance and sometimes not. The antiaveraging argument is particularly interesting given the enduring use of averages to promote contracting out. Averages may be the antonym of nuance but are often used to support federal hiring caps, cuts, and freezes. They also underpin head-to-head, dollar-to-dollar competitions between federal and contract teams to determine which can deliver the same goods and services at the lowest cost using the most-efficient organization possible.

These competitions were used most recently by the George W. These offices are rarely popular within their own departments and agencies but have generally been left to do their work, with minimal interference. The Clinton administration was a notable exception. Convinced that oversight offices were the source of wasteful government, the administration opened the reinventing government campaign by promising deep budget and personnel cuts in the number of federal supervisors, personnel specialists, budget analysts, procurement specialists, accountants, and auditors.

Congress created the first OIG in to unify the scattered audit and investigatory functions within the Department of Health, Education, and had created forty-two by the time Clinton entered office. It is arranged into departments, agencies and commissions. The main function of the Federal Bureaucracy, is to carry out the policy and work on the finer details of the bills passed by Congress.

The bureaucracy has 2. However there can be problems of the bureaucracy. There are three main criticisms of the Federal Bureaucracy. Company Reg no: