Snapshot Gives Look at Federal Workforce Numbers, Jobs, Locations

A new analysis is providing insight into the composition of the federal workforce.

The Partnership for Public Service analyzed data from FedScope, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) online data source.

It found that the federal workforce now numbers more than two million civilians, with the workforce growing by seven percent from fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2023, with some of the hiring due to the COVID-10 pandemic.

The largest increase by year was 2023, when the federal government hired more than 80,000 employees. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is one of the reasons for increased hiring in 2023.

The federal workforce makes up six tenths of a percent of the U.S. population.

Agency Numbers

The largest agency with the largest workforce is the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which grew its workforce by nine percent in 2023, and has more than 400,000 employees. The next largest agencies were the Navy, Army and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).   

If you exclude the U.S. Postal Service, Defense and national security agencies account for nearly 71 percent of the total civilian federal workforce.

Agencies hiring the most from 2020 to 2023 including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Occupations

The federal government has the highest number of employees in the medical field, with 310,000 workers (15.5 percent). Some of the top hired occupations in fiscal 2023 included nurses, medical support assistants, compliance inspection and support, and contact representatives.  

The second largest category were administrative and clerical services, with 300,000 employees, doing jobs like human resources, program analysis, and facilities managers.

Location

80 percent of federal employees worked outside the Washington, DC metro area.

The largest locations for federal employees were Washington, DC (7.3 percent of total fed workforce), Virginia (6.6 percent), California (6.5 percent), and Maryland (6.4 percent).

One percent of feds worked in a foreign country.

Demographics

The federal workforce remains older than the workforce at large, despite the Biden Administration’s efforts to bring in younger workers. Employees under 30 were just seven percent of the federal workforce, despite making up 20 percent of the overall workforce population. Over 42 percent were over age 50, compared to 33 percent of the entire U.S. labor force.

Sixty percent of the federal workforce identified as white compared to 76 percent in the private sector. Nearly 19 percent of the federal workforce identified as Black and 10 percent identified as Hispanic compared to 13 percent and 19 percent of the U.S. labor force, respectively. 

The federal workforce is 55 percent male and 45 percent female.

30 percent of feds are veterans.

Education and Pay

On education, over 50 percent of the workforce had at least a Bachelor’s degree, higher than the overall workforce.

25 percent were at least high school graduates. The administration has been making a push for skills-based hiring, where employees are hired based on the skills they have, instead of education.

On pay, 27 percent of employees were on pay plans outside the general schedule.

The Senior Executive Service (SES) added 272 employees in 2023, the largest increase in SES members in the past decade. 39 percent of SES members are female, continuing a “slow and steady trend of more women joining the SES.”

Recruitment

The report found that time to hire increased to 101 days in 2023. That’s up four days from 2021.

The report notes that “Efforts are continuously being made to streamline and improve the federal hiring process to reduce time-to-hire and improve efficiency, but it remains longer on average compared to private sector hiring timelines, which typically ranges from 30-45 days.”

55 percent of new hires were in the age 30-49 range. 48 percent were considered entry level.

Attrition

The overall federal attrition rate was 5.9 percent in 2023, lower than 2022, but consistent with the rate in 2021.

52 percent of voluntary separations were from those quitting. Retirements made up 48 percent.

This led the authors to once again emphasize the need to replenish the talent pipeline.

“To maintain a world-class workforce and deliver effective services to the American public, federal agencies must recruit young talent and employees with the necessary skills for both current and future needs,” stated the report.