Ever since the recession came we’ve seen an explosion in spending from our government. This came from both a liberal government taking over in 2009 and the need for government to step in during a struggling economy. But there is a misunderstanding about bloated government.
Sure there’s a bureaucracy but anyone that’s worked for a large organization knows that this is a necessary evil. There’s always low hanging fruit to grab when you’re sitting in Congress belching one liners through CSPAN to your constituents, but the truth is bloat can really only be referred to in the context of how many employees or how much waste there is as a percentage of the entire populate. Hence the chart above.
What you see here are two lines. The green line is aligned with the left vertical axis and the blue line is aligned to the right. The green line is for federal employees and the blue line is for all government (state and local included). Both are divided by the total population at the time.
As you can see the data for all government employees is not as complete as for federal, because it hasn’t been collected as long. But the clear trend is an overall reduction in employment as a total percentage of the population. In the federal jobs line the reduction in government employment occurred both in the Clinton and Bush Administrations.
One can speculate wildly about why this happened. Clinton could take credit for the reduction but the economy was great and lots of people were drawn to the private sector in places like the Silicon Valley. Likewise Bush could take credit for reducing government but spending went through the roof. Less employees, but more contractors? Perhaps. For Obama, it’s obvious, government stepped in and created jobs. Many of those jobs were government jobs. Even then it didn’t increase much and may be falling soon.
But speculation really doesn’t matter. All that matters is that conversations take place like this. Talk of national debt should be as a percentage of something or per person. Talk of bloated government should be in terms of the total population. Government will continue to grow in absolute terms, there’s no way to stop that and we may not even want it. It might should be kept in check in relative terms though.
In case you’re wondering, the spike in federal employees ever 10 years is census hiring.
 By The Weakonomist |
The Weakonomist is the founder of Weakonomics. Clicking the picture of the puppy will tell you more about him. If you like what you're reading consider subscribing to the blog, following him on Twitter, and checking out the related posts below. Please consider a donation if you really enjoy Weakonomics. Also keep in mind that nothing I say can be construed as financial advice. |
