|
|
|
 < Back to Contents  Chapter Eleven: GOVERNMENT Government Spending Government Employees Federal Entitlements Federal Judiciary Military Personnel Blacks in the Military Women in the Military War Deaths Veterans Patriotic Attitudes
|
 |
Government Employees |
|
|
||
|
||||||
|
As the chart indicates, in 1997, state and local governments employed six times more people than the federal government. This may seem counterintuitive, given the fact that all state and local governments combined spend somewhat less each year than the federal government. These employment trends can be easily explained, however. First, the federal government makes much greater use of contractors to perform governmental functions than do state and local governments. Federal agencies routinely outsource research and development, strategic planning, employee training and evaluation, computer installation, system and standards design, transportation, printing and even some national security and intelligence operations. Second, more than half of the federal budget consists of payments to, or on behalf of, individual beneficiaries— Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, veterans’ benefits, civil service and military retirement, housing subsidies, student aid, and so forth. Other substantial chunks go to the armed services, debt service, and grants to the states, leaving only about a fifth of the federal budget for the civilian payroll. The principal reductions of federal employees in the last decade of the century were among civilians working at the Department of Defense. Source
Notes HS series Y 308; SA 1987, table 471; SA 1997, tables 537 and 634; SA 1999, table 539. For federal expenditures exceeding state and local expenditures, see SA 97, tables 484 and 518. For a breakdown of federal expenditures, see SA 97, tables 518–521.
|
||||||
|
|
|
PBS Program | Trends of the Century | Viewer's Voices | Interactivity | Teacher's Guide |
|
