The period from fiscal 2002-2005 has seen an expansion in the largely hidden workforce of federal contractors and grantees bringing the “true size” of the federal government from 12.1 to 14.6 million due to increased spending by the Pentagon, according to a study by Paul C. Light, director of the organizational performance initiative at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School.
Contracts in 2005 amounting to $388 billion and about another $100 billion in grants expanded the federal workforce, including civil servants, postal workers, military personnel, contractors, and grantees, to a much higher level than the estimated 11 million force in 1999.
Light said contract employees made up over half of the 2005 total, or 7.6 million jobs, and the 3.2 million increase since 1999 “marks both the single largest absolute and percentage increase since 1990 at the end of the cold war, which produced sharp declines in the number of civilian, military, and contactor employees during the 1990s.”
