President Obama’s new budget includes a table showing the number of executive branch civilian employees the administration expects to have in 2017. With that, we can compare the growth in federal government employment over eight years of Obama (2009 to 2017) to eight years of President George W. Bush (2001 to 2009).

Federal civilian employment rose from 1,738,000 million in 2001, to 1,978,000 in 2009, to a proposed 2,137,000 in 2017. Thus, employment grew 13.8 percent under Bush and 8.0 percent under Obama, as shown by the bars on the left of the chart below.

Overall since 2001, federal civilian employment has increased by 399,000 workers, which is like a mid-sized city populated entirely by bureaucrats.

Perhaps the Bush increase stemmed from the build-up of Pentagon civilians to support the president’s war efforts? No, that was not it. The bars on the right show that the nondefense workforce grew 17.2 percent under Bush and 10.1 percent under Obama.    

If the next president wants to save some money, he or she should consider that the extra 399,000 workers since 2001 are costing taxpayers about $120,000 each in wages and benefits—that’s about $48 billion a year.