To summarize, the same number of federal employees as in 1974 are currently administering a much more populous nation with a much, much, much bigger income and budget.
One would be hard pressed to show a similar increase in productivity from any private company.
Expect pushback from the crop of low information government hating posters here. There is no argument that will convince them that government workers aren’t just sitting around all day sipping lattes and laughing about how dumb we all are for supporting them in their luxurious lifestyles.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) did a detailed survey of telework in 2024.
The report showed a total of 2,277,000 employees as of May in the 24 Cabinet departments and largest independent agencies, which account for all but 2 percent of federal employees. Of those, it said, 1,220,000 must work onsite full-time and 1,057,000 are eligible to work offsite—among whom, 228,000 are remote workers. How Many Federal Employees Work Remotely? It’s Complicated
The OMB report is here:
As of May 2024, approximately 50 percent of federal workers worked every day in roles that are not eligible for telework, including those who work onsite providing healthcare to our veterans, inspecting our food supply, and managing Federal natural resources. At the same time, telework-eligible personnel spent approximately 60 percent of regular, working hours in-person, at agency-assigned job sites. As CBO noted in a recent report, these numbers indicate that the Federal workforce has telework rates generally in line with the private sector. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/OMB-Report-to-Congress-on-Telework-and-Real-Property.pdf
Obviously, the quality of Federal government performance depends mostly on the quality of the employees. The government has to compete with the private sector for employees. If the government has more onerous work requirements than the private sector, it will not be able to attract good workers. That includes telework rules.
adding how about a graph of the number of pages dropped from the bureaucracy every year.
How many federal regulations are issued each year?
For example, the number of final rules published each year is generally in the range of 3,000-4,500, according to the Office of the Federal Register. While some of those rules may have substantial economic, legal, or policy effects, many of them are routine in nature and impose minimal regulatory burden, if any.
Which entity is running a tighter ship? Conservatives are very good at creating bureaucracy. I have done a fair amount of federal government work and from my experience, the most onerous regulations that impact my productivity has come from Homeland Security and/or results from our economic war with China. As just one example, federal purchases can only be made with companies that demonstrate they are not using certain Chinese electronics. This includes products that do not contain electronics. The result is a great deal more bureaucracy with no increase in staffing. You can guess the end result when it comes to purchasing efficiency and costs.
I mean, you say that…but how is that going to happen?
It’s easy to say these things in the abstract, and in the passive voice. But most federal spending, and most federal employment, has nothing to do with the government’s regulatory function.
Some 70% of federal civilian non-postal employment is defense and national security. The top single employer being Veteran’s Affairs (you know - doctors, nurses, orderlies, etc.). Nearly all of federal spending is stuff that is either untouchable (like paying interest on the national debt) or that Trump has said is off the table (like cuts to national defense or social security).
Most federal government “stuff” (whether it’s an agency or a regulation or a federal employee) has a constituency that benefits from it, and which will push back on efforts to eliminate it. It’s hard to trim that stuff back. It’s going to be harder to do it by putting Elon and Vivek in charge of the effort, since they have neither any experience with nor any formal position in the federal bureaucracy. A huge part of why Trump was ineffective in promoting many of his policies in his first term was because he approached them as if he were a CEO, rather than President. Putting two entrepreneurs in charge of his government-cutting effort is going to make things even worse for that initiative.
Just my obs. I’ll be glad to end up with huevo on my face.
Constituency? They can be distracted by talk of immigrants, Blacks, Wokeness, etc etc. The only constituency they work for will be running the government. Just dump millions of now, cheap-labor ex-Gov employees into the job market.
Backlash in 4 years? How? Voting won’t matter. That used to be The American Way but we just did away with voting a few weeks ago. So, no voter i.e. constituency, backlash.
States run elections, not the federal government. If the assumption is that all 50 states will somehow fall in line and stop holding elections…that seems unrealistic.
It will be interesting to see what will be a stronger motivator for politicians…self-preservation or political pressure?
No it is pure racism. It is using you to spread nonsense.
The actual definition of woke.
Woke, the African-American English synonym for the General American English word awake, has since the 1930s or earlier been used to refer to awareness of social and political issues affecting African Americans, often in the construction stay woke.
At the same time, the active military component of that total has decreased from 2.0 million to 1.3 million (down 35%). This means the civilian federal workforce has increased from 2.9 to 3.7 million, increase of 28%.
So government spending more to do the same thing (“administering the nation”) is not inefficiency? Also, Congress IS government, as far as government spending is concerned.
Do you really consider people who think government has become too big to all be “government hating” people?
This is clearly true. Total government spending has been going up for more than a century. Regardless of which party is in power at any specific time. That’s because politicians care much more about power than about policy. And the more they (the politicians) control, the more power they have.
LOL. I’ll believe it when I see it. I think nothing substantive will happen over the next 4 years. Heck, even a 5% reduction of the total US government spending would barely make a dent in the annual deficit, so in this case “substantive” can be defined as total cuts of over 5% of overall spending. I think the next 4 years will mostly be business as usual with perhaps a few “visible to the media” extravaganzas for show purposes. I’m pretty sure CNN will show footage of a few illegal immigrants being put on buses and returned south of the border, but that’ll be pretty much just for show. And I’m sure the media will show a government agency or two being shut down, but they will be minor ones with tiny budgets relative to the overall spending. In other words, get ready for a good show.
Frozen cherry pie manufacturers have finally been liberated from one of the most unnecessary Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations. And it only took nearly 20 years of lobbying!
On March 14 (“Pi Day,” of course), the FDA announced that “standards of identity and quality” for frozen cherry pies that were implemented in 1971 were revoked as of April 15. These standards of identity mandated how many cherries needed to be in frozen cherry pies (25 percent by weight) and how blemished they were permitted to be (only 15 percent) in order to be included in these pies.
… these regulations applied only to cherry pies, and specifically to frozen cherry pies. Fresh cherry pies did not have to meet these standards. Frozen apple pies did not have to meet these standards. Only these pies did…
What was absent from all of this was any evidence that Americans needed the federal government’s protection from lower-quality frozen pies. The American Bakers Association submitted a petition to the FDA all the way back in 2005 to see if this rule could be revoked.
