$174 Billion
— The amount the Pentagon spent last year on contractors to help run the U.S. military, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, here. The 710,000 contractors on the Pentagon payroll in 2011 represented a workforce 90% the size of the Defense Department’s civilian workforce of 807,000. Added together, these 1.5 million civilian employees (technically, full-time equivalents) are a bigger force than the nation’s 1.4 million active-duty uniformed military personnel.
