The real question is what are they as a percentage of the population? Just the number 3 million sounds like a lot, but it was considerably worse in 1945 when the US population was only 133M compared to the population now of 340M.

That's 0.88% of the population currently employed by the feds, and looking at that chart it's not terribly far off of the 0.71% in 1940, prior to the massive expansion, which was probably due to WWII. There's a valid argument that the government is too big, but there isn't one that it's grown since World War II. We're basically back to pre-war per capita staffing levels.

Oh, and WTF is almost 1/3 of the federal workforce doing in DoD? It's even more if you include the VA.

The real question is what are they as a percentage of the population? Just the number 3 million sounds like a lot, but it was considerably worse in 1945 when the US population was only 133M compared to the population now of 340M.

That's 0.88% of the population currently employed by the feds, and looking at that chart it's not terribly far off of the 0.71% in 1940, prior to the massive expansion, which was probably due to WWII. There's a valid argument that the government is too big, but there isn't one that it's grown since World War II. We're back to pre-war per capita staffing levels.

Oh, and WTF is almost 1/3 of the federal workforce doing in DoD? It's even more if you include the VA.

The real question is what are they as a percentage of the population? Just the number 3 million sounds like a lot, but it was considerably worse in 1945 when the US population was only 133M compared to the population now of 340M.

That's 0.88% of the population currently employed by the feds, and looking at that chart it's not terribly far off of the 7.1% in 1940, prior to the massive expansion, which was probably due to WWII. There's a valid argument that the government is too big, but there isn't one that it's grown since World War II. We're back to pre-war per capita staffing levels.

Oh, and WTF is almost 1/3 of the federal workforce doing in DoD? It's even more if you include the VA.