When it comes to the federal payroll, two seemingly contradictory things are true.

One, the Biden administration went on a hiring spree that expanded the government workforce at the fastest pace since the 1980s. And two, it remains near a record low as a share of overall employment.

In the four years separating President-elect Donald Trump’s two terms, the federal civilian head count has risen by about 4.4%, according to the Labor Department, to just over 3 million, including the Postal Service.

But that’s a much slower pace than private payrolls have grown over the past four years. And it leaves the federal government at 1.9% of total employment, down from more than 3% in the 1980s.

The incoming administration promises to erase whole sections of the federal bureaucracy: Vivek Ramaswamy, co-chair of what Trump is calling the Department of Government Efficiency, has said 75% of the workforce could go, in pursuit of $2 trillion in cuts. But it will be a challenge to find cuts without depleting services.“When we’re looking at the numbers of the federal workforce, it’s still about the same size as it was in the 1960s,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a think tank. “The narrative out there is the federal government workforce is growing topsy-turvy, and the reality is that it’s actually shrinking,”

Staffing expanded during Trump’s first term as well, by about 2.9%. But some agencies contracted significantly and had bounced back as of March, the latest data published by the Office of Personnel Management show.

The State Department, which had shrunk through attrition and a hiring freeze imposed by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, gained nearly 20% from 2020 to early 2024, or about 2,300 workers, not including the Foreign Service. (Some of the gain reflected passport processors, whose numbers had fallen when few people traveled overseas during the pandemic.) The U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers public health and humanitarian grants overseas, grew by 23%, to 4,675. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security, rebounded to 22,500, the highest level in its history, after a hiring freeze and funding shortfalls.

Other agencies with rising head counts were driven by some of President Joe Biden’s initiatives — especially the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Recruiters streamlined procedures to bring on more than 9,000 people, distributed across the agencies handling parts of the laws.

The Treasury Department also expanded as the IRS received an $80 billion infusion — later cut to $40 billion — that allowed it to top 100,000 employees, the highest level since 1997.

But the biggest increase came at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which stands at more than 486,000 employees, up nearly 16% since 2020. The growth was driven by the PACT Act, a law passed in 2022 that authorized $797 billion to cover more veterans exposed to toxic substances during their military service.

Veterans Affairs, together with civilian employees of the Pentagon and the military branches, accounts for 1.25 million federal workers. That’s 55% of the total, not counting intelligence agencies or the Postal Service. The active-duty military adds nearly 1.4 million, a tick down from 2020.

“You can’t get to $2 trillion in cuts and 75% of the federal workforce if you’re not going to cut DOD,” said Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, referring to the Department of Defense. “It’s too big — it’s impossible to get to those numbers.”

Hiring at veterans hospitals and at field offices to support infrastructure projects has meant that all of the federal staffing growth has happened outside the Beltway. The number of federal workers in the Washington metropolitan area has been flat since 2020, and stands at about 12% of the total.

Some of that arises from the trend toward remote work, which allowed agencies to hire specialized talent elsewhere in the country. Although pay varies by locality, for each occupation federal workers make nearly 25% less than their private-sector counterparts, according to the Federal Salary Council.