This is odd because the Federal workforce has been growing more slowly than the general population for many years.

My point was that the upper echelons grew at the expense of the staff 'in the field'. Inverted pyramid was probably not the way to describe what happened, that would be an exaggeration.

But this is what I observed between 1976 and 2006 in the area where I worked: when I started as an intern the headquarters staff consisted of a supervisor and 3 division heads and 3 or 4 support staff. There were three field areas that were supervised by this HQ. Taken together (going from memory) there were about 21 staff in those areas. Some of these were seasonal hires as the work was seasonally variable, but the full staffing was there when most needed.

By 2006, the headquarters had moved to a new, much larger, office space and the HQ staff had expanded significantly, while the field staffs had not increased much at all. Some of the additional HQ staff was justified but in other cases it was grade creep due to supervisors seeking higher pay and looking for other staff to take on some of the duties that (in my opinion) the supervisors could have handled.

Other factors were at work, no doubt. For one thing the staff in field positions had managed (after many years) to have grades increased to reflect the work being done. Less money to go around.

Given what the Trump administration is doing to the Civil Service, I would not want to be working for the government now.