Largest Federal Agencies by Employment
The biggest federal agencies ranked by total civilian employee count.
According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management FedScope dataset (March 2025), this ranking draws on 2,289,472 federal civilian employees across 115 agencies and all 50 states plus DC - see our methodology for how the figures are computed.
Department of Veterans Affairs leads with 474,532 on the employees measure - the median of the 50 ranked agencies is Smithsonian Institution at 4,453.
What This Ranking Tells Us
The Department of Veterans Affairs is the largest federal civilian employer, driven by its network of 171 medical centers and hundreds of outpatient clinics. The Department of Defense civilian workforce (Army, Navy, Air Force combined) rivals VA in size. Homeland Security grew significantly post-9/11, while traditional departments like Treasury and Justice maintain large workforces for tax administration, law enforcement, and border operations.
What the Ranked Data Shows
This ranking covers 50 federal agencies drawn from OPM FedScope Employment Cubes. The leader is Department of Veterans Affairs with 474,532 on the "Employees" measure - 106.6× the median agency (4,453). Federal workforce data of this kind is widely used by USAJOBS applicants, congressional staff, and GAO analysts to understand where federal hiring and compensation are concentrated across the country.
The median agency in this list is Smithsonian Institution at 4,453, illustrating the midpoint of the distribution. At the other end, National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities anchors the bottom of the ranked set with 465. The spread between leader and trailing positions is what matters most for policy: it shows how unevenly federal employment, compensation, and tenure are distributed across jurisdictions and departments, and where shifts in locality pay, mission assignments, or hiring freezes would bite hardest.
For job seekers evaluating federal career moves on USAJOBS, these rankings inform strategic choices: a higher-salary state or agency often signals concentrated senior-grade positions, while a large-headcount jurisdiction points to broader entry-level opportunity. Combined with length-of-service patterns, the ranking gives a practical view of where the federal workforce is most durable and where turnover creates openings. Data sourced from Office of Personnel Management (OPM) FedScope and refreshed as OPM publishes new semi-annual FedScope releases.
The top 10 federal agencies by employees, OPM FedScope.
The bar to make this list
How employees is distributed across all 50 agencies - most cluster in the middle, with a long tail at the top. A agency needs about 90,840 to reach the top 10.
Distribution of employees across all 50 federal agencies.
Source: Office of Personnel Management (OPM) FedScope.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the largest federal agency?
The Department of Veterans Affairs is the largest federal civilian employer with over 470,000 employees. The Department of Defense components (Army, Navy, Air Force) collectively employ over 600,000 civilians but are counted as separate agencies in OPM data.
How many federal agencies are there?
This portal tracks 115 federal agencies from OPM FedScope data, ranging from massive departments with hundreds of thousands of employees (Veterans Affairs, Defense) to small independent agencies with fewer than 100 staff, plus 498 sub-agency components within them.
Explore More Rankings
PlainGovJobs is rendered directly from OPM FedScope federal-workforce data, figures are sourced from published program rules and verified against primary sources. The ranking table, chart, and summary line above are computed live from OPM FedScope employment records; the explanatory narrative and FAQ answers are editorial context, not live queries. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.