This is true enough, and something I freely own to. Refer to my just-posted "Most expensive mile of subway track on Earth" blurb for proof of that. -)

But as to this OP, all I did was cite figures from the report, and then I went and did a comparison, later in the thread and reported that it comported with what I remember from my days managing professional and non-professional federal civil service works: namely that the professional degree holders seemed to be a little underpaid and that the non-professional civil service workers seemed to be greatly overpaid (in comparison to their private sector counterparts). And when you add up the total compensation, the government is paying (meaning we as taxpayers are paying) quite a lot. Don't we have a right to see that such expenditures are wisely utilized?

I don't think there's any doubt whatsoever that there's an element of duplication and waste in our federal government in terms of the size of its workforce. I would suspect the same could be said for state and local (municipal) governments -- which directly employ about 18 million people -- as well.

"As of 2016, the federal government currently employees just over 2 million full-time employees, excluding the Postal Service.

States with the most federal civilian employees as of December 2016 include California (141,158), Virginia (136,377), Maryland (130,402) and Texas (114,170). The vast majority of all federal employees -- about 79 percent -- work outside the D.C. region.

The U.S. Postal Service, a quasi-governmental agency, employs by far the single largest segment of the civilian federal workforce. Other agencies employing the most civilian employees include the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs."

George Will also had an interesting piece in the February 2017 online edition of National Review (I know that magazine's website is probably a big daily must-visit for you, Ken ;-) entitled "Big Government" is Ever Growing, On the Sly."

In it, he argues that the federal government has managed to expand its workforce via means other than direct employment as a federal civil servant, and that this is done through use of "administrative proxies": state and local government, for-profit businesses, and nonprofit organizations.

"Since 1960, the number of state- and local-government employees has tripled to more than 18 million, a growth driven by federal money: Between the early 1960s and early 2010s, the inflation-adjusted value of federal grants for the states increased more than tenfold. For example, the EPA has fewer than 20,000 employees, but 90 percent of EPA programs are completely administered by thousands of state-government employees, largely funded by Washington."

There are also contractor employees in most federal agencies (my wife, who's a federal civil servant when she's not on National Guard extended orders, says she has several contractors working in her organization, and that most other agencies employ them to one extent or another).

The federal government is a leviathan, and I guess it depends on one's outlook as to the scope and intrusion or, more benignly; "presence," of government in our lives as to whether that's necessarily a bad or good thing.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."