World’s Biggest Employer: U.S. Department of Defense

On Monday, The Economist published an infographic showing, by millions of people hired, the world’s 10 biggest employers. The U.S. Department of Defense topped the list with 3.2 million employees.

Although the graphic shows how oversized the U.S. Department of Defense has become, it does not take into account proportion by population. For instance, although employees for the Defense Department make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population, England’s National Health Service employs 1.4 million people—almost 3 percent of its population. —BF

The Economist:

The private sector has been slow to generate jobs, and government-spending cuts usually end up cutting jobs. And governments employ a lot of people: in our chart of the ten biggest global employers, below, seven are government-run.

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U.S. Department of Defense