The True Size of Government.

AuthorLIPFORD, JODY W.
PositionReview

* The True Size of Government By Paul C. Light Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999. Pp. ix, 238. $44.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

Measuring the size of government is inherently problematic. For example, the usual measures--government revenues or expenditures as a share of gross domestic product--offer some clues, but they leave begging many questions about government's less-direct influence on resource allocation through regulations and mandates. Although the title of his book suggests a broader undertaking, Paul C. Light grapples with one measure of the size of government, the size of the labor force that produces goods and services for the federal government. Still, he does more than simply enumerate the federal workforce; he also deals with important policy issues related to managing that workforce.

Light begins by noting that the size of the federal civilian workforce is an inaccurate and deceptive measure of the size of the total federal workforce. The reason is simple: as Americans have demanded that the government provide more services with fewer (labor) resources, the government has turned increasingly to a workforce employed through contracts, grants, and mandates to state and local governments. Light estimates this "shadow workforce" comprises almost 12.7 million employees, a number far greater than the sum of the federal civilian workforce, U.S. postal workers, and uniformed military personnel (4.25 million). Altogether, the true federal workforce approaches 17 million, a figure almost nine times the size of the federal civilian workforce, the latter being the reference group of President Clinton's claims of reduced bureaucracy and the end of the era of "big government."

Yet, the president's claims have some merit. From 1984 to 1996, the total federal workforce declined by almost 1.7 million. However, closer examination reveals that the decline was largely the result of reducing the number of defense civil service, military, and defense contract workers, a decline that presumably would have occurred regardless of which party controlled Congress or sent an occupant to the White House.

Sorting through the numbers used to calculate the total federal workforce can be tedious, but the insights gained are valuable. Of particular importance, the size of the federal workforce, including the shadow, is far greater than the usually cited statistics reveal. For example, the true federal workforce accounts for about 60 percent of...

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