White House wants more feds in fiscal 2012

Although there's been much talk in recent weeks about scaling back the size of government and making it more efficient, the Obama administration’s fiscal 2012 budget proposal would add about 15,000 new federal civilian employees.

The increase can be seen when you compare the number of feds in the current fiscal year to the estimated number of employees in 2012. But the number of government employees would decrease when you compare the 2012 request to the 2010 budget, according to the Washington Post.

The White House’s 2012 budget proposes a federal workforce of about 2.1 million.

“Consistent with the overall recent trends, personnel increases focus on providing greater security and economic opportunity for the American people,” the administration states in an analysis of the budget.

Proposed increases in the 2012 federal workforce would be in departments such as Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Justice and State.

DHS would have largest growth, adding 8,000 workers, while the Defense Department would lose about 7,000 civilian employees. 

Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew said Feb. 14 that the growth is related to new activities in some agencies. “If you look agency by agency, you’ll see that it’s not a story of broad-based growth. It’s in the most cases pretty concentrated,” Lew said. 

The budget document does not detail the proposed new hires or reductions, and administration officials didn’t go into specifics about the workforce when the budget was released.

The White House did note the two-year pay freeze underway for federal civilian employees and went on to defend federal compensation in its budget analysis.