_portrait.jpg){kind=link}
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
701 points (100.0% liked)
Leopards Ate My Face
6958 readers
782 users here now
Rules:
- The mods are fallible; if you've been banned or had a post/comment removed, please appeal.
- Off-topic posts will be removed. If you don't know what "Leopards ate my Face" is, try reading this post.
- If the reason your post meets Rule 1 isn't in the source, you must add a source in the post body (not the comments) to explain this.
- Posts should use high-quality sources, and posts about an article should have the same headline as that article. You may edit your post if the source changes the headline. For a rough idea, check out this list.
- For accessibility reasons, an image of text must either have alt text or a transcription in the post body.
- Reposts within 1 year or the Top 100 of all time are subject to removal.
- This is not exclusively a US politics community. You're encouraged to post stories about anyone from any place in the world at any point in history as long as you meet the other rules.
- All Lemmy.World Terms of Service apply.
Also feel free to check out [email protected] (also active).
Icon credit C. Brück on Wikimedia Commons.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The federal government is literally the same size it was in the early 1970s.
Idiots voting red: "the gubments gotten too big!"
I was strictly speaking of the number of civilian federal employees. Yes that number was 3 million as of December 2024. It was roughly 2.8 million in 1970.
This also includes a RIF of around 450k people in the 1990s, and I'm not sure about what in the 1980s as I recall reading Reagan was very anti-fed. As a proportion of the population, the amount of people working for the country as civil servants has shrunk.
What do you consider "the federal government".
There are roughly 3 million people in the federal government and that number varies.
I was strictly speaking of the number of civilian federal employees. Yes that number was 3 million as of December 2024. It was roughly 2.8 million in 1970. It has always been around that amount, despite the population and complexity of the country growing in the 55 years since.
It is a lie that the government is larger at least in terms of employees, and any citizen saying they feel the government has "gotten too big" is generally a fucking moron. Especially when those types typically support the abusively bloated and heavily unchecked defense spending.