The executive branch will grow to more than 2 million civilian employees for the first time in 15 years, under President Barack Obama's 2010 budget plan.

The growing ranks of government employees reflect the ever-growing responsibilities many agencies are taking on and the different priorities President Obama has from his predecessor:

• The Defense Department's workforce will grow by about 19,000 full-time equivalent positions, most of which will come from converting — or "insourcing" — about 13,800 contractor jobs to federal employee jobs. This is the largest staffing increase proposed for next year, aside from Commerce.

• The Veterans Affairs Department will bring on about 9,800 new employees, including 5,700 doctors, nurses and other medical services personnel to help treat wounded veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

• The Homeland Security Department is slated to get about 7,000 more employees to help it enforce immigration laws, secure borders and provide transportation security. The proposed hires include more than 1,200 new employees at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

• The Social Security Administration's workforce will grow by about 3,200 to help it handle an expected increase in retirement and disability claims as the baby boomer generation ages and as the economic downturn drives more people to pursue government benefits.

"The administration came in saying they saw government as a vehicle to provide needed services to the public," said John Palguta, vice president of policy at the Partnership for Public Service. "Not just benefits, but making sure we have the national security we need, and making sure we can deal with the economic crisis. But to do that, we have to invest in the federal workforce."

Even excluding the roughly 102,000 Commerce Department workers who will be brought on temporarily to help with the 2010 census this year and next, the executive branch would have the largest workforce since before President Bill Clinton began downsizing. That does not include postal employees.

Willie Hensley, VA's acting assistant secretary for human resources and administration, said thousands of doctors and nurses across the nation have served as interns at VA facilities, and the department will try to lure some of them back with recruitment and relocation incentives. VA will also use student loan repayment programs and nurse scholarship programs to attract medical personnel.

In addition to medical personnel, VA needs another 1,300 social workers, intake specialists and other support employees to help it treat combat veterans, some of whom suffer from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, and about 800 information technology workers to help it upgrade its computer networks, records systems and automated hiring systems.

Hensley said VA also must beef up its human resources staff to help with all the hiring. VA hired about 1,300 HR personnel in the last two years, and expects to hire at least 700 more next year.

HR workload swells

One HR director at the Navy, who asked to remain anonymous, hopes the service will similarly increase its HR staffing to prepare for a major hiring effort.

"We're all taking fairly significant budget cuts in fiscal 2010, and that equates to manpower cuts," she said. "It's Navy-wide. Most HR directors I speak to, including myself, we don't have the money to cover the payroll for people we have now."

The HR director said she can't afford to replace employees who leave, and "unless some miracle happens between now and October," she expects her staff will shrink from 46 to 39. Her office already has its hands full with new responsibilities stemming from the department's new pay and performance system, called the National Security Personnel System. And when next year's massive hiring effort gets under way, she fears the workload on HR offices will be crushing.

"Some things just won't get done," she said. "Things will take a lot longer — longer to hire, longer to get back to you on any advice and guidance. There are only so many hours in the day, and we already take work home on the weekends. I don't see any relief in the near future."

Goal is streamlined hiring

The White House's budget said the Obama administration intends to streamline hiring to bring on hundreds of thousands of new employees over the next several years. The Office of Personnel Management will lead that effort.

SSA said it plans next year to hire 200 administrative law judges and about 700 new employees to work in field offices, call centers and processing centers; the hope is they will help the agency slash its backlog of more than 750,000 benefits cases.

Greg Heinemann, president of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations, said the planned hires are welcome, but more are probably needed.

"We're seeing increasing pressures at Social Security field offices because of the growth of baby boomers, disability claims and other issues," Heinemann said. "We're still studying [what staffing levels we need] but suspect we'll still have work undone" after 2010's hires.

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