CONNECT to the database.
The organization, finances and employment of State
and local governments (supplemented with
statistics on the Federal Governments finances and
employment) are the broad subject matter of the
Census Bureaus Governments Division. These
governments vary widely in structural patterns,
authorities, and responsibilities. The division
accommodates these variations, and collects and
publishes data within the framework of a set of
definitions, classifications, and procedures that
apply uniformly and consistently throughout the
United States.
State and local governments constitute an
important economic sector. Their annual
expenditure amounted to $1.1 trillion dollars in
fiscal year 1990, and they had debt outstanding of
$916 billion . 15.5 million people were employed
by state and local governments as of October 1991
(12 percent of the civilian labor force), as
compared with 3.1 million Federal civilian
employees.
