Trumps White House Cited a Nonexistent Reason for Freezing Federal Hiring

One of Donald Trump’s first actions as US president was to sign an executive order (pdf) to freeze non-military federal hiring. The move, White House press secretary Sean Spicer explained at a Jan. 23 press briefing, “counters the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years.”

In reality, no such dramatic expansion occurred.

The federal government employs nearly 2.2 million people, accounting for about 1.4% of all employment in the country. That makes it the nation’s largest employer (Wal-mart is second). It’s true that during US president Barack Obama’s eight years in office, the federal government added a little over 120,000 jobs, but that’s about 60,000 fewer than were added during former US president George W. Bush’s administration, and employment by the federal government as share of all US employment is relatively low compared to most of the last 70 years. (The spikes in the following chart represent workers brought on temporarily to conduct the US decennial census.)

<div class="atlas-chart" data-id="SyA9ol2Ue" data-width="640" data-height="449"><img src="" style="max-width: 100%;"></div><script src="https://www.theatlas.com/javascripts/atlas.js"></script>


More:

http://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2017/01/trumps-white-house-cited-nonexistent-reason-freezing-federal-hiring/134814/?oref=river