About 3.9 million people work for the US government directly, counting civilian employees, active-duty military, and the Postal Service. The Office of Personnel Management reported roughly 2.03 million civilian employees on the federal payroll in early 2026, the military added approximately 1.33 million active-duty service members, and the Postal Service employed another 531,000 career workers.1U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Federal Workforce Data – Workforce Size and Composition Once you add contractors, grant-funded researchers, and the National Guard and Reserve, the federal footprint reaches somewhere between 7 and 9 million workers.
The Direct Federal Payroll
OPM tracks the civilian side of the workforce through its Enterprise Human Resources Integration system, which pulls payroll data from every agency each month. That system showed roughly 2.03 million civilian employees in early 2026, a number that excludes Postal Service workers, who operate under a separate personnel system.1U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Federal Workforce Data – Workforce Size and Composition The median age of the civilian workforce is 47, and roughly 80 percent of those employees work outside the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.
On the military side, the Department of Defense reported about 1.33 million active-duty troops plus roughly 760,000 National Guard and Reserve members who serve part-time but can be called to full-time duty.2Performance.gov. Department of Defense The Postal Service added 531,000 career employees in 2025.3United States Postal Service. Number of Postal Employees Since 1926
Executive Branch: Where Most Federal Workers Are
The executive branch accounts for the overwhelming majority of federal employment, spread across 15 cabinet departments and dozens of independent agencies.
The Department of Defense dwarfs everything else, employing about 750,000 civilians on top of its 1.3 million active-duty troops.2Performance.gov. Department of Defense Add in the Guard and Reserve, and DoD alone accounts for about 2.84 million people, more than the rest of the federal government combined.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is the second-largest cabinet department, with roughly 436,000 employees as of March 2026, mostly medical professionals running the VA health care system.4Department of Veterans Affairs. VA Workforce Dashboard Issue 365Department of Homeland Security. DHS Annual Performance Report for Fiscal Years 2023-20256Internal Revenue Service. IRS Budget and Workforce7Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Legislative Branch
Congress has 535 voting members: 100 senators and 435 representatives. Six non-voting delegates represent the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.8U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. The U.S. House of Representatives Elected officials are a small slice of the branch, though. Roughly 30,000 people work in the legislative branch overall once you count personal office staff, committee staff, and the support agencies.
Those support agencies include the Government Accountability Office, with over 3,000 auditors and analysts, the Library of Congress with about 3,200 permanent staff, and the Congressional Budget Office with a staff of about 275.9U.S. GAO. Following the Federal Dollar – Geographically10Library of Congress. About the Library of Congress11Congressional Budget Office. Organization and Staffing
Judicial Branch
The federal judiciary is the smallest branch, employing approximately 30,000 people.12Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Annual Report 2021 That figure covers the nine Supreme Court justices, roughly 870 authorized judgeships across the circuit courts of appeals and district courts, and thousands of support staff. Court clerks, probation officers, and pretrial services officers keep the system running across more than 800 locations nationwide. Federal defender organizations employ over 4,200 lawyers, investigators, and support staff serving 92 of the 94 federal judicial districts.
Contractors and Grant-Funded Workers
The official headcount understates the real size of the federal workforce by a wide margin. Millions of additional workers are paid through federal contracts and grants but never appear on a government payroll.
The most widely cited estimate comes from researcher Paul Light at New York University, who calculated the total blended federal workforce at roughly 9.1 million. That figure includes about 3.7 million contractor employees and 1.6 million grant-funded workers at universities and nonprofits, layered on top of the direct federal payroll. Contractors build weapons systems, run agency IT networks, conduct federally funded medical research, and staff call centers. They don’t receive federal pensions or benefits, but their salaries flow from federal procurement and grant funds. Whether you count only payroll employees or everyone whose salary ultimately comes from federal dollars changes the answer dramatically.
The Numbers Are Dropping in 2025 and 2026
Any snapshot of federal employment right now is a moving target. The federal civilian workforce shrank significantly through 2025 and into 2026 as the administration pursued agency-wide staffing cuts. The GAO found that about 134,000 employees left federal service between January and June 2025, while agencies hired only about 66,000 replacements. Another 144,000 employees were approved for a deferred resignation program that would end their federal employment by the close of 2025.13U.S. GAO. Federal Agency Workforce Changes: Update for January to June 2025
Some agencies were hit harder than others. The Department of Veterans Affairs went from roughly 484,000 employees in January 2025 to about 436,000 by March 2026, a loss of nearly 50,000 positions in just over a year.4Department of Veterans Affairs. VA Workforce Dashboard Issue 36 The OPM dashboard at data.opm.gov carries the most current count.
State and Local Government Are Separate
Federal employment is only part of public-sector employment in the United States. As of March 2024, state and local governments employed 19.9 million people combined: 5.5 million at the state level and 14.4 million at the local level.14U.S. Census Bureau. Annual Survey of Public Employment and Payroll Summary Report 2024 Those workers include public school teachers (the largest single category), police officers, firefighters, county clerks, and state agency staff handling everything from driver’s licenses to Medicaid administration. They aren’t federal employees, but they’re often folded into general questions about how many people work for “the government.”
Adding federal, state, and local payrolls together puts total US government employment at roughly 24 million people, or about 14 percent of total US employment. That share has been relatively stable for decades. The federal civilian workforce has barely grown since the 1960s in absolute terms, while state and local payrolls expanded with population growth and the buildout of public education and health care programs.