EMPLOYMENT : Federal Job Force Not So Bloated : U.S. government workplace has grown modestly in 50 years. State, local numbers reveal significant expansion.

Has the federal work force become bloated with a government payroll that gobbles tax revenues ever faster?

The answer is an unequivocal yes for many Americans, including members of Congress who are on a crusade to rein in “big government” and transfer many federal responsibilities to the states.

A peek at the federal work roster, however, yields an unexpected opposing argument: Since the end of World War II, the number of federal workers, excluding military personnel, has increased modestly.

“Most people are staggeringly surprised when they find out the level of federal bureaucrats hasn’t changed in 50 years,” said Donald Kettl, a professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan Washington research and policy organization.

Moreover, the rate of federal employment--a ratio comparing the number of federal employees to the overall U.S. population--has dropped sharply over the last five decades. The government employs 1 worker out of 90 Americans today. In 1946, the ratio was 1 in 62. In absolute terms, the number of federal employees has risen from 2.2 million in 1946 to 2.8 million today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over that period, the nation’s population rose from 140 million to 250 million.

So why the impression of an exploding federal work force?

“The federal government is mainly in the business of transferring [money], which doesn’t take a lot of people,” said Sarah Ritchie, the assistant director of the Center for the Study of the States at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y. Yet the “magnitude of expenditures at the federal level plus the deficit has created the impression that the federal bureaucracy is bloated and growing.”

But at the same time, other figures appear to belie the notion that state and local governments are somehow more efficient than federal operations. Over the five decades when the ratio of federal workers to population was falling, the same ratio for state and local governments more than tripled.

In 1946, state and local government workers nationwide stood at 1 per 42 Americans. It is 1 to 16 today. In absolute numbers, the total rose from 3.3 million in 1946 to 16.5 million now.

Put another way: In 1946 there were roughly three state and local government workers for every two federal employees; today there are about six for every one federal employee.

Direct government services account for much of the expansion at state and local levels. As communities grow, more employees are needed to provide such services as teaching, police protection, trash collection and road and sewer construction and repair.

Kettl said there has been a tremendous growth in county workers, who provide social services and maintain parks and recreation services.

The number of schoolteachers, administrators and support personnel has also grown, with about half of all state and local employees working in public schools--from the elementary to the college level.

“The schools are offering more varied curriculums,” Kettl said. “There are more career counselors, more art teachers and more gym teachers.”

In 1955, the first year the Bureau of Labor Statistics kept such figures, 2.1 million state and local workers were involved in education and 2.6 million were involved in other areas. In 1994, 8.4 million people were involved in public education and 7.9 million in other government service areas.

Prisons and jails also have proved to be big growth industries at state and local levels. During the 1980s, corrections department jobs increased 108% nationwide, or eight times as much as the growth in all jobs at those levels of government.

Ritchie said tougher sentencing laws and the “war on drugs” led to enormous increases in prison populations, resulting in more hiring.

Today, the rate of growth at those levels of government appears to be slowing, although it continues to increase. Between June, 1990, and June, 1993, state employment grew 3.3% and local employment 5.5%.

At the federal level, however, employment dropped 12% during the same period. Since mid-1993, the federal work force continued to shrink slightly, 2.7%, and with more budget cuts certain from Congress, more federal jobs will be eliminated.

Kettl says those effects will be felt outside Washington too, because 9 out of every 10 federal workers live and work outside of the capital.

“The fact is there are as many federal employees in California as there are in Washington,” he said.