As if we didn’t need more evidence of big government growing bigger and bigger, here comes a story about not only the number of federal employees on the rise, but the increase in government-funded contractors, and organizations that receive government grants:
“Roll all of those together — and mix in the numbers of postal workers and military personnel on the federal payroll — and the ‘true size’ of the federal government stands at 14.6 million employees, said Paul C. Light, the study’s author and a government professor at New York University.
That compares with 12.1 million employees in 2002, said Light, who has tracked the growth of government for years and has data for as far back as 1990. The latest increase is almost entirely due to contractors, whose ranks swelled by 2.5 million since 2002, Light wrote in his 10-page research brief.”
