The True Shape of Government

he year 1997 marked a turning point in the shape of the federal hierarchy. For the first time in modern history, mid-level employees outnumbered lower-level employees. In 1983, when the Reagan administration first launched its "bulge project" to reduce mid-level bureaucracy, jobs graded at the General Schedule-1 to GS-10 levels outnumbered GS-11 to GS-15s by almost 300,000. As of March 1997, according to data provided by the Office of Personnel Management, the GS-11 to GS-15s had come to outnumber the GS-1 to GS-10s by 44,000.

Most of this lower-level thinning came from 1992 to 1997 when the number of GS-1 to GS-10s fell from 767,000 to 594,000. Parallel cuts occurred in the government's blue-collar workforce, down 40 percent since 1983. The middle of the federal hierarchy got bigger, while the bottom got much, much smaller.

It is important to note that all of the mid-level flooding came before the reinventing government campaign. Unlike Reagan, who spent four years pounding on the middle levels only to see GS-11 to GS-15 employment skyrocket, Gore has spent five years holding the line, while reducing the overall number of mid-level managers by nearly a quarter. Although the federal government remains some distance from the 1-to-15 span of supervisory control that Gore promised in 1993, it has clearly been moving in that direction. The ratio has changed from 1-to-8 when Gore arrived to 1-to-11 by March 1997. Some former super- visors still are supervising as "team leaders," but it is an impressive restructuring nonetheless.

No one knows just what happened to the roughly 370,000 lower-level jobs (173,000 GS-1 to GS-10 jobs and 200,000 blue-collar jobs) that left the federal full-time-equivalent workforce. Some of the jobs have no doubt disappeared forever, gone the way of the couriers, typists, telegraph operators and pony express riders. Others no doubt ended up working for contractors. Guards still check entry passes at federal buildings, janitors still pick up the trash, messengers still move packages from building to building. Most just do not get their paycheck directly from Uncle Sam.

Except for law enforcement, it is hard to imagine any front-line job category that will not be eligible for privatizing and contracting out by 2020. By then, the federal hierarchy may be composed mostly of policy analysts, contract managers, inspectors and auditors, but almost no one who remembers how to shut a space shuttle hatch, build a weather forecast, monitor a flight path, or talk to a citizen.