Federal payroll costs ballooned from $217 billion during fiscal 2020 to $270 billion by the end of fiscal 2024, a new report published by Open The Books has found.

For the federal government, fiscal 2020 began in October 2019 and fiscal 2024 ended in September 2024, covering almost the entirety of the Biden administration.

The 24% increase in salary payments corresponded to just a 5% increase in headcount, according to the report. Such a gap is explained by a surge in well-paid roles within the federal bureaucracy. By the end of fiscal 2024, the number of employees earning $200,000 or more had increased to 68,445, representing a gain of 82% since fiscal 2020. The number of federal workers earning over $100,000 and more than $300,000 increased by 49% and 84%, respectively, over the same period.

The $270 billion payroll figure underreports the true cost of the bureaucracy, as Open The Books estimates benefits for federal employees cost an additional 30%. 

Open The Books reported that the names of 383,000 people working in 56 agencies were redacted in federal records. Furthermore, the Office of Personnel Management declined to provide payroll data for employees at intelligence agencies, the State Department, the IRS, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Bureau of Prisons over national security concerns. 

“A fix for the transparency gap is urgently needed, particularly in light of an administrative state that’s living increasingly high on the hog,” the report reads. “In order to drain the swamp effectively, taxpayers must be able to see through the silt and measure the depth.”

Some have argued that a well-paid bureaucracy can retain high-quality talent that would usually avoid government service in favor of lucrative careers in finance or consulting. Advocates point to Singapore, famous for its highly compensated and efficient civil service, as evidence for their claims. 

Conservative critics charge that former President Joe Biden diverged from a pursuit of bureaucratic efficiency by hiring large numbers of staffers tasked with advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal government. Open The Books previously reported that the Biden administration spent $38.5 million paying DEI staffers in 2023.

During the Biden administration, average pay was highest at financial regulatory agencies. The average employee at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission earned $236,006 and $213,869, respectively, at the end of fiscal 2024.

There is some evidence that President Donald Trump is beginning to reverse the Biden administration’s approach to bureaucracy, according to Open The Books. Trump’s White House, for instance, has 404 staffers who collectively cost taxpayers $44.1 million — the lowest since 2009, when adjusting for inflation. This represents a 29% decrease in cost from the Biden White House, which had the largest headcount since the Nixon administration. 

Trump, perhaps taking a page out of the Singaporean playbook, pays his top staff comparably well. Thirty-five of the president’s staffers earn $195,000 or more — a salary just one Biden staffer took home in 2024.