How many government employees are there in the United States? At the time of this writing, there are a little less than 23 million public employees, distributed across the three levels of government: 14.9 million in local government (in green), 5.5 million in state government (in red), and 2.4 million in the federal government (in blue). The FRED graph above shows how these numbers have evolved.

What’s striking is that the federal government workforce has remained relatively flat over seven decades, while the lower levels show steady increases. Federal employment also has regular spikes, corresponding to temporary hires to conduct the decennial census.

Of course, over such a long period, the population of the United States would have increased considerably. So it probably makes more sense to look at the public workforce as a percentage of the population. This is what the second graph below does. Now we can see that federal public employment has been slowly declining since 1959, state employment stopped growing in the 1990s, and local employment stopped as well in the 2000s.

How these graphs were created: First graph: Look for the Current Employment Statistics (Establishment Data) releases and select Table B-1. Select the three series shown and add them to the graph. Second graph: Take the first, click on “Edit Graph,” add the population series, and apply formula a/b*100. Repeat for the two other lines.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.