2.1 million people are federal government employees.
4.1 million people are federal contract employees.
1.3 million people are active duty military staff.
1.2 million are grant employees.
500,000 are post office employees.
9.2 million people are employed by the federal government, which make up 5.7% of all workers in the United States.
Also salary, wise, here is what we’re looking at.
$90,500 is the average salary of federal employees.
$94,000 is the salary of federal contractors.
$51,700 is the median salary for postal employees nationally.
Not showing income for grant employees, because the range is too big, where the health department has an average salary of $120,000, but departments such as agriculture or education can pay 30-50% less.
Also, not showing the military, due to the initial salary being low, but the later benefits making it noticeably worth more.
Also, wanted to see which states have the most federal employees.
- California-172,000
- Virginia-155,000
- Maryland-150,000
- Texas-148,000
- Florida-99,000
- Georgia-80,000
- New York-68,000
- Pennsylvania-68,000
- Washington-60,000
- Ohio-54,000
Which those are states.
Washington DC, which hasn’t been made a state yet has 245,000 federal employees currently.
Vermont has the fewest federal employees of any state at 2,500.
The amusing thing to this is how much federal jobs are concentrated into one region of the country.
Washington DC-245,000 jobs
Washington DC has 774,600 jobs in the whole city, surpassing the total population of the city by 70,000, due to people commuting from Virginia and Maryland.
Federal workers though, make up 29% of all jobs in DC, almost 5x the national average. That’s also just on direct federal employees. This doesn’t include military, contract or post office, which would put DC over 40%.
Virginia-155,000
Virginia has 3.9 million people employed, putting federal workers at 3.8% of workers, not factoring military, post office and contractors.
Which does add up, where Virginia has 128,000 active duty military members, adding about 3% to the workforce.
Contractors are also high, which puts federal employees to over 10% of Virginia.
Maryland-150,000
6% of the total workforce of the state at 2.5 million jobs, again not including military, post office or contractors, which would put the state close to 15%.
Why this is important.
45% of federal employees worked from home in 2020 and still many are doing that today, with it expected a lot of it will be permanent.
The rise of work from home makes a case the federal government could begin hiring outside the DC Metro Area more, providing more jobs to economically depressed areas, such as Arkansas, Oklahoma, upstate NY and more.
Places, where even 500 additional jobs at federal salaries could improve the economies noticeably.
This is sort of an answer to how the federal government could improve the economy in impoverished areas.
Hiring employees in challenged areas there working remotely.
Offering some bonuses for existing employees to move there.
Offering bonuses to people living on pensions or social security to also move to challenged areas as a form of stimulus.
It’s not an auto fix, but could be a fast way to help economies in struggling locations, while possibly lowering long term costs.