Click here for Adobe Acrobat version.

10/31/01

Government Continues to Grow
Trend in growth of state, local governments illustrated in ATR briefing.

WASHINGTON - Americans for Tax Reform today released findings on the growth of government, showing that the total local, state, and federal government workforce has increased dramatically over the past decade. The findings are part of a larger study to be released later this year.

While the number of federal employees has remained flat since Republicans took over Congress in 1994, the number of state and local employees has increased significantly. Together, the total number of full time government employees at all levels grew from 16.9 million in 1994 to 18 million in 2000. This while the number of military personnel has drastically declined, from 2.6 million in 1994 to 2.2 million last year - a fall of over 15%.

Grover Norquist, President of Americans For Tax Reform, commented on the new findings. "These results illustrate what many of us already knew: that big government has come at the expense of our national security. With a new and challenging war on terrorism underway and unprecedented new threats within our borders, we can no longer afford to allow national security concerns to be crowded out by politicians' zeal for big-government spending programs. Too much is at stake."

*Source: U.S. Census, Department of Defense. Government employment data for 1996 has not been published by Census.

More Graphs available here (Must have adobe PDF to view)