> the number of civilians in the US Federal work force has gone up fairly steadily.
The graph you provided is not Federal government, it’s all US government which includes state & city, and other types of government employees. It should be expected this grows with population size, and to get a sense of whether it’s really shrinking or growing, you should divide by population. But in any case, this chart doesn’t backup your claim that Federal government is growing.
The link to the Federal government was just underneath that graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001. US Federal government absolute size peaked in 1991 and has gone down slightly since then. If you divide this one by population, the decline would be a bit stronger and more obvious. The ~10 year spikes are census workers. Notice we can see the peak in 1991 with or without the census spikes.
The graph you provided is not Federal government, it’s all US government which includes state & city, and other types of government employees. It should be expected this grows with population size, and to get a sense of whether it’s really shrinking or growing, you should divide by population. But in any case, this chart doesn’t backup your claim that Federal government is growing.
The link to the Federal government was just underneath that graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001. US Federal government absolute size peaked in 1991 and has gone down slightly since then. If you divide this one by population, the decline would be a bit stronger and more obvious. The ~10 year spikes are census workers. Notice we can see the peak in 1991 with or without the census spikes.