The Total Federal Workforce

stimates of the total workforce outside the civil service that delivers goods and services on behalf of the federal government combine figures derived using two basic methodologies. The number of workers engaged under contracts and grants was estimated by Eagle Eye Publishers Inc., a Northern Virginia research firm, using the Bureau of Economic Analysis' input/output (I/0) model of the U.S. economy.

Eagle Eye used the Bureau's national multipliers to estimate the impact of inputs on the regional and national economy. In this analysis, the inputs are federal prime contract dollars, as recorded by the General Services Administration's Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), and non-contingency grant dollars as recorded in the Commerce Department's Federal Acquisition Awards Data System (FAADS). Linking each inflation-adjusted grant and contract dollar to its appropriate Standard Industrial Classification I/O job multiplier shows how many direct and indirect jobs federal grant and contract spending generated. The number of state and local workers engaged under federal mandates is based on analysis of a 1997 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey of state and local employees who were asked how much time they spent doing things required by the federal government: no time, between 25 percent and half, between half and 75 percent, or more than 75 percent. Applying the conservative end of those percentages to the actual number of state and local employees yielded the simple estimate of mandate-created jobs.

Federal full-time equivalent civilian employees: 1.9 million
Federal uniformed military personnel: 1.5 million
U.S. postal workers: 0.85 million
Federal grant-created jobs: 2.4 million
State and local mandate-created jobs: 4.7 million
Federal contract-created jobs: 5.6 million

TOTAL: 16.9 million