What percent of US works for government or a government related entity?

[ChooseLiberty]

Directly employed, contracted or works for a contracted company?

I've heard 30%, but guessing it's more like 40-50% all in and it almost never gets smaller.

[jkr]

this is the REAL problem...don't bite the hand that feedz u

[hamilton1049]

I know I have heard it said the largest employer is the US govt. That is disturbing enough.

[erowe1]

One reason this is so hard is that "government related entity" is a very fuzzy term. If it just includes businesses that depend entirely on government contracts, then it may not be that much. But does GM count? Does the entire banking industry count? Do farmers who get subsidies count? If you count all the businesses that the govt. virtually controls, or is trying its best to control, through a combination of regulatory sticks and corporate welfare carrots, then it includes probably 90% of us.

[t0rnado]

You'd have to look at it in terms of federal, state, and local. Local would include fire fighters, cops, teachers, etc. so I'm guessing it's a shitload.

[ChooseLiberty]

Exactly. Haven't seen anything credible that breaks down the total amount.

Definitely f'd up when you consider that maybe 50% in the productive private sector is supporting the other 50% in the gov't. Talk about welfare state.



You'd have to look at it in terms of federal, state, and local. Local would include fire fighters, cops, teachers, etc. so I'm guessing it's a shitload.

[Anti Federalist]

This was posted at yahoo as an answer to the question.

It's two years old though.


Approximately 13%.

I got it from these stats which are not all from the same year, unfortunately:

There are 15.6 million state and local employees.

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/…

There are 1.8 million federal civilian employees, excluding post office.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm

1.4 million uniformed members of the military.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_military

600,000 postal employees.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos141.htm#emply

That/s 19.4 million people employed by government.

There are 146 million in the workforce
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.n…

So that means that 13% of the workforce is employed by federal, state and local governments.

[mediahasyou]

All these people are heavily invested in the state. They will freak out when you try to take some state function away. We need to give these people options when the state is no longer there to provide for them.