A new report by the Brookings Institution says seven new cabinet agencies within the federal government have been created since 1960 such as the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Homeland Security in 1965 and 2002, respectively.
The Environmental Protection Agency and DHS’ Federal Emergency Management Agency are among the dozens of sub-cabinet agencies that have been established since the 1960s, Brookings said in the report posted Feb. 13.
John J. DiIulio wrote that that U.S. government has experienced a five-fold increase in annual federal spending since 1960 and a six-fold rise in the number of pages in the Federal Register, which compiles all federal regulations and rules.
The total number of workers at state and local government agencies increased by six times to at least 18 million employees driven by a ten-fold increase in federal grants-in-aid to state and local governments from the early 1960s to the early 2010s, adjusted for inflation.
The number of federal contract workers climbed to approximately 7.5 million in 2013 from nearly 5 million recorded in 1990.
The Defense Department had full-time federal civilian workers of between 700,000 and 800,000 and full-time for-profit-contract employees at a range of 620,000 to 770,000 over the past nine years.
The number of nonprofit workers supported by the federal government jumped from approximately 5.6 million in 1977 to about 11.4 million in 2012, the report added.
