| Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Civilian Government Employment by Level of Government as a Percentage of State Population, 2003* |
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The wages of government are... money well spent. Through governments we provide ourselves security, public safety, education, roads, public health, parks and recreation, peace and tranquility, liberty, and justice for all. Those who do this work--government employees--earn roughly 15.5% of all wages and salaries paid in the U.S. In 2003, according to federal Bureau of Economic Analysis figures, total wages and salaries nationwide amounted to $5.1 trillion. In Texas, the total was $360.2 billion. Nationwide, more than 18.5 million Americans worked as civilian government employees earning $790.6 billion. Another 107.1 million worked in the private sector earning more than $4.2 trillion. In Texas, governments employed about 1.4 million Texans who earned $56 billion while the 7.6 million employed in the private sector earned $298 billion. |
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Source: Census Bureau. (full source, footnote) |
Full Footnote: Total federal employment slightly exceeds the sum of states depicted since the total includes the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands but the chart omits these. The District of Columbia which is not a state even though it is home to 192,413 federal employees and another 44,271 local government employees. All told, more than forty-two percent of DC residents work for either the federal government or local government.