Government Employees Exceed Population
of Florida

Take a zero off and you’ll wouldn’t notice the difference.

I’d like a constitutional amendment that says government workers, excepting active duty uniformed soldiers, and all people on welfare cannot vote. It’s a conflict of interest.

One of the government buildings I visit on occasion has the executive parking lot filled with Porsches and Mercedes. Not bad for 'Civil Servants', eh?

Most government workers don't make great salaries. The big shots with titles do. I was one of the workers who provide the service, not the big shot in the nice office with his feet on the desk. And guess what, we paid taxes, too.

There are 143 million non gov employees in the US, meaning that, roughly, there are only 12 slaves per overseer. No wonder our taxes are so high.

Government work sometimes is referred to as "service". I do appreciate those who actually work as "servants". If they truly do their jobs, there is plenty to do. HOWEVER, sadly, this often seems not to be the case. Respectfully to #4, Catherine, may truly be one of the servants who doesn't make a big salary. But where I live all the government workers seem to have an income that is equal to or greater than the general population. Additionally, the retirement and health benefits of government workers always seems to be much greater than the general population.

In the end, we will all be government employees because the government will own everything. Modern day feudalism. We will all be peasants giving our loyalty to Lords. It will happen if enough people let it happen.

Hey Mr. Trump...time for some cutbacks ......

About half of them (or more) at the federal level are unionized and nearly impossible to fire (e.g. the IRS, Social Security Admin, Postal Service). A big example of how bloated the federal government is, came during the 2008 housing crisis and the years after. When the rest of the country had a housing market downturn, housing went up in DC. Bring on Elon and let him start chopping.

Decades ago, the popular misconception was that the best and brightest people chose private industry over government service because the government did not pay as well and only marginal workers went that route. Gradually, government salaries increased to the point that they became as high or higher than the a similar position in private industry. The result? We now have highly-paid marginal people in the government.

We need an 8-year lifetime term limit for all government workers. All government spending must be linked and set forever at 10% previous years' GDP. Just think of the amount of money we spend giving them costly pensions after a few years of a cushy job. Government employment should be similar to Jury Duty. Everybody trying to get out of it.

We could easily get by with 1/10th of that, and they all need to be held to strict Productivity Standards.

We need a 5% per year reduction in ALL fed employees, running for AT LEAST 10 years.

It's a very large number and if you worked in government 20-30 years back or more, then you missed out on the significant increases in salaries, benefits and pensions that most enjoy in the past 10-15 years. All of which requires taxes and fees to pay for them. Now, take a look at how that impacts elections when most of these employees will vote to ensure they keep/maintain their jobs. Likely have family members who do so too. Then, all of the people who are getting government assistance/services will vote to ensure they keep those services. This is how CA has done it over the past few decades. Other states are following their plan.

The focus of the article is predominantly federal civilian workers, excluding the military but the larger numbers are in the state and local governments, which presumably includes counties, which may overlay multiple municipalities. Entities which have the power to coercively collect taxes, such as school districts, are counted in the state and local tallies. What is not counted are the millions of "private workers" who work on behalf of the federal government, at taxpayer expense, such as the large, profitable "Beltway bandit" firms conglomerated around DC, like the "prime contractors," Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Deloitte, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, McDonell-Douglas and hundreds of their subsidiary firms not counted as government employees. On large contracts, the primes have subcontractors, as well as subs of subs. This is largely driven by government mandates to hire minority-owned contractors, many of which are incapable of performing the work, so they hire subs while taking huge profits as pass-through middlemen, adding no value to the work performed on behalf of the government. The author used data supplied by the BLS and OMB, large federal agencies under the control by political appointees, like the ones touting "disaster equity."