Office of Personnel Management in the context of Federal Employees Retirement System

The United States federal civil service is the civilian workforce (i.e., non-elected and non-military public sector employees) of the United States federal government's departments and agencies. The federal civil service was established in 1871 (5 U.S.C. § 2101). U.S. state and local government entities often have comparable civil service systems that are modeled on the national system to varying degrees.

The U.S. civil service is managed by the Office of Personnel Management, which in December 2011 reported approximately 2.79 million civil servants employed by the federal government. This included employees in the departments and agencies run by any of the three branches of government (the executive branch, legislative branch, and judicial branch) and the over 600,000 employees of the U.S. Postal Service.