The spreadsheets below were compiled to accompany my blog "Do Republican presidents really believe in small government?"

The data in the following charts was obtained from the Historical Federal Workforce Tables (since 1962) compiled by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which can be found at http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp.  I added the column on the left showing the presidents and their terms of office, and the column on the right showing the totals not counting military personnel.  I got the terms of office of each of the presidents from a table on the Filibuster cartoons website (http://www.filibustercartoons.com/prezidents.htm) because the chart was color coded by "red" and "blue" presidents.

Because the statistics in the OPM chart are computed as of December 31 of each year, and presidents take office on January 20 of the year after their election, I used the figure from the year before their inauguration because it is the closest figure available.  With only 21 days between December 31 and inauguration day, these figures fairly accurately depict the size of the federal bureaucracy at the start and end of each president's term.  Also note that the numbers from the OPM table are in thousands, so you have to add three zeros to get the actual size of the bureaucracy at any given time.  For example, the non-military workforce at the beginning of Jimmy Carter's term was 2.883 million employees, not 2,883.  The years marked with an asterisk were years in which temporary federal employees were hired to conduct the census.

Chart showing presidents and the size of the federal bureaucracy during their terms

(numbers in thousands)