Expansion of Government: Federal Employment

In today's NY Times (here) Paul Krugman points out that Republican presidential candidates have made a campaign theme out of expansion of the Federal government and particularly the expansion of the federal workforce. The data [1] [2] and a naive forecast are displayed above (read a fact check of outgoing Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty's numbers here).

Federal employment has actually been decreasing since the Vietnam War. The small expansion during 2010 was purely a result of the temporary employment of census workers. Unfortunately, the naive forecast above is not very realistic.
Federal employment is probably too low right now as shown by the forecast confidence intervals above. Given world military events, increasing threats to homeland security and increasing need for financial regulation based on the global financial crisis, there is nowhere to go but up for Federal employment. The expansion will be a continuing source of campaign rhetoric during the next presidential cycle.

[1] The data can be found here.

[2] Data comes from agency 113 monthly submissions and covers total end-of-year civilian employment of full-time permanent, temporary, part-time, and intermittent employees. Executive branch includes the Postal Service, and, beginning in 1970, includes various disadvantaged youth and worker-trainee programs. Uniformed Military Personnel data comes from the Department of Defense.