Service Jobs - Government

Government (revised fall 2024)

Total government employment for federal, state and local government equals 22.782 million as of 2024. Government, excluding education and public hospital employment has 11.113 million jobs, which is the difference of 22.782 million and 10.549 million jobs in public education and 1.120 million public hospital jobs.

Jobs in government excluding education and hospitals include office work for executive offices, regulatory and legislative bodies, and the judiciary, but also all the rest of the jobs in parks, recreation, public health excluding public hospitals, public works, corrections and a few more. Federal employment includes the postal service and defense department among others.

Government produces valuable services. Valuable production should be added to Gross Domestic Product to reflect our hard work and productive capacity, but government’s valuable services are rarely sold so there is no market value to record as production. What is it worth to have Congress spend months passing environmental legislation, then to have executive bureaucracies write regulations to administer the law, and then to have courts hear law suits to interpret the law?

There is no ready measure of values to include in GDP so the practice is to value government services at cost. Government cost of production though is labor cost only. When the government buys computers and reams of paper it is recorded as a final sale from business to government. Since the goods and services government buys are already included in GDP as part of business final sales, they are not added again. Government’s cost of labor to provide services represents its contribution to GDP. It guarantees that more government jobs mean more Gross Domestic Product.

The decision to use labor cost as government’s addition to GDP is a sensible compromise in the computation of GDP. Since the objective of computing GDP is to measure our productive capacity, government work should not be ignored. No attempt is made to differentiate between one type of government labor and another. When services are bought in common as they are with government they could be for anything.

On April 1, 2005 the Washington Post published an article about a Congressional investigation: “Cost of Cisneros Probe Nears $21 million Over 10 years.” Cisneros was President Clinton’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development way back in 1995. Congress authorized an independent counsel investigation after allegations that Cisneros lied about payments to his mistress. After 4 years and $10.3 million dollars of investigation, Cisneros pleaded guilty. That was in 1999, but the Washington Post reported the investigation continued in order to investigate if anyone attempted to obstruct justice. The continued probe added another $10.7 million to the expense, hence the caption “$21 million over 10 years”.

We could say America would be better off if the money used on the Cisneros probe went into medical research or highway construction, but that is different from saying government should reduce its total expenditures, or even that it wasted money. Either expenditure pumps $21 million into the economy and any cut in government spending whether it is for medical research, highway construction or Cisneros probes will reduce GDP and harm employment. Government is a major employer and even though the government has money to pursue what appears like a political vendetta America needs government that is actively creating or inventing jobs.

Current production by our federal, state and local government add up to $5.321 trillion in 2024 or nearly 10.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product. It is a big enough share to think that government production by all levels of government provides a mighty engine of employment. All this spending is supported by taxes and borrowing. Taxes reduce private spending and job creation, but those in government are experts at spending all their revenue as fast as they can. They run deficits and make debt finance a way to pep up employment and put off higher taxes. The federal government can borrow but also controls the money supply so it can create money to cover its spending and put off collecting taxes. Local governments can use bond-funded projects to speed up and enlarge spending in the near term and let the growth in property values and higher property taxes pay for capital projects in the future.

The decision to do Cisneros probes or build roads and highways is the decision of government. Builders and developers build a few roads in their new developments, but the roads that get people from here to there are planned and funded by a government. The actual building takes place through contracts to private firms in the highway, street and bridge construction industry.  The people who work in this industry are counted as part of employment in private business and not counted as government employees. Government employment is already large, but undercounts employment that is the result of government taxing and spending such as employment in the highway, street and bridge construction industry since they are on private payrolls even though their jobs are really the result of government spending. The terms government contractor, outsourcing and privatization all connote private businesses, but they are private businesses doing government funded and government sponsored work. Government employment added to government sponsored employment is more than a mere 22.782 million: much more.

Government creates many jobs both in and out of government but the jobs it has for those on government payrolls has lots of work that develop and support specialized skills and careers in life science, physical science, social science, finance, law, corrections, and transportation. Some of the work is not done anywhere else and requires government funding. We are excluding the jobs in education or public hospitals.

Many of the government’s specialized and professional jobs require college degree training but especially baccalaureate degree training, and that is without mention of the millions of jobs in education, since we are only discussing government excluding education. Nearly 34.3 percent of jobs in the federal government require BA degree skills or higher; 44.8 percent in state government; 21.7 in local government.

Among financial occupations budget analysts have 52 percent of 47.3 thousand jobs are in government and for financial examiners 19.7 percent of 63.4 thousand jobs are in government. All of tax examiners, collectors and revenue agents work for government, 54 thousand strong, and they support thousands more jobs at accounting firms and tax services.

In life science occupations, conservation scientists, zoologists, foresters, epidemiologists, soil and plant scientists have 22 percent of jobs in government. In physical science occupations, astronomers, atmospheric and space scientists, environmental scientists and hydrologists 31 percent of the jobs depend on government to maintain their work and support jobs. In social science occupations, geographers, historians, political scientists have 36 percent of jobs in government.  In economics, 52 percent of economists work in government jobs, although the percentage applies to those actually working as economists and not those teaching at public schools and universities. They are counted as faculty in education totals.

In engineering occupations, engineers have 12 percent of jobs in government with 23 percent of nuclear engineers, 16 percent of aerospace engineers and 31 percent of environmental engineers have jobs in government. Government employs 26 percent of statisticians and 49 percent of cartographers that hold jobs outside of teaching.

Counselors and social workers have 524.3 thousand jobs on government payrolls for those working as practitioners, but many work in health care where government supported or subsidized health care supports another 1.261 million jobs. Those totals do not count those teaching and working at schools and universities where there are 475.4 thousand more jobs. Counselors and social workers owe their employment to government.

Then there are courts that employ 100 percent of judges, magistrates, administrative law judges, adjudicators, hearing officers and law clerks and more than 21 percent of lawyers, or 155 thousand jobs. The courts enforce laws but law enforcement has more than 648.7 thousand government jobs as police and sheriffs patrol officers, another 113 thousand work as detectives and investigators, but more jobs are as fish and game wardens, parking enforcement officers, railroad and transit police, crossing guards, lifeguards and a few more. Law enforcement generates prisoners. American needs jobs and millions of prisoners create lots of jobs: 351.4 thousand reported jobs as correctional officers and jailors, 52.3 thousand jobs as first line managers of correctional officers and jailors and 85.9 thousand jobs as probation officers and correctional treatment specialists.

Outside of government office bureaucracies there are 178.2 thousand jobs like agricultural inspector, construction and building inspector, highway maintenance worker, power plant operator, water and sewage treatment plant operator where jobs are on government payrolls. Over 185.1 thousand work in government transportation jobs such as air traffic controllers, ambulance drivers, transit and intercity bus drivers, subway and street car drivers, bridge and lock tenders, and traffic inspectors among other jobs.

Finally, there are postal service occupations where 502.5 thousand work in specialized postal occupations as postmasters, postal clerks, mail carriers, mail sorters, processors and machine operators, production, planning and expediting clerks, and shipping, receiving and inventory clerks. Remember too we are talking about civilian employment so the armed forces are not included here.

Government service, excluding education and hospital employment, has 11.113 million jobs, but that is only 7.1 percent of establishment employment. There are no more service jobs left and we have distributed all 134.453 million of them by their NAICS sector categories.  It is time to make a summary of service employment changes, which comes up next.