Agencies With Most $100,000+ Federal Employees and Lowest Average Salaries

 

Ralph R. Smith

The federal workforce is highly diversified. No one really knows how many federal agencies there are (it depends on how one defines “agency” and who is doing the counting). One estimate is that there are 456. In any event, there are a lot of agencies and independent organizations in the federal government doing many different things.

In some agencies, the salaries paid to federal employees are much higher than in other agencies. Here is a list of agencies with the most employees that make more than $200,000 per year. The $200,000 figure only includes salary; it does not include bonuses or benefits. The highest-paid employees are often in agencies that are specialized and work with industries that employ highly paid people because of their expertise.

Average Salary for Federal Employees

According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in a 2019 report, the Average Annual Base Salary (adjusted to include locality pay) for Full Time Permanent federal employees was $87,312 per year at the time of the report.

The General Schedule pay system was established in 1949. According to OPM, more than 75% of federal workers were in grade GS-7 or below in 1950. That compares to 20.4% at GS-7 or below at the end of September 2018. This is a decline of 54.6% of lower graded employees. In large part, this is because of the increased specialization and automation of functions in the federal government. It is also probably due in some cases to “grade creep” in agencies.

More than 27% of federal employees were on pay plans outside of the regular GS-scale at the end of fiscal 2018.

Agencies With Most Employees Making Over $100,000

With the average federal employee’s salary standing at $87,312, which agencies have the most employees that make significantly more than average?

Here is a listing of agencies with the highest number of employees who are paid at least $100,000.

Number of Employees	Agency Name
95,458	DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS
59,075	DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
46,752	DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
44,873	DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
35,010	DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
30,440	DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY
24,924	DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
15,946	DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
14,371	DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR
13,996	SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
13,688	NAT AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
12,443	INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE
11,145	ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
8,725	DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
7,284	DEPARTMENT OF STATE
6,846	DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
6,844	GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
5,358	DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
4,345	FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION
4,189	SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Keep in mind that the number of employees in each agency varies widely. For example, in 2017, OPM reported that among cabinet-level agencies, the Department of Veterans Affairs had more than 342,000 employees while the Department of Justice had about 112,000 and the Department of Agriculture had over 73,000.

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(including those with the lowest average salaries)