The Obama administration is calling for a cutback in federal contracting and is expanding the federal workforce. Should the federal contractor worry? No, for the following reasons:

1. Federal program managers can achieve their goals faster and more effectively than they can with federal employees. The profit motive causes contractors to jump when the government project manager says jump.
2. A contract team can be deployed faster than a federal employee team and can deploy elsewhere immediately upon completion of a project.
3. In most cases, contract employees are more productive than federal employees. It's not the quality of federal employees, it's just that contract employees respond more readily to pressure to perform because they can be easily replaced.
4. In most case contract employees are cheaper than federal employees, particularly when retirement and benefit costs are considered.

Yes, visible contracts are being cut for political reasons, and new federal employees are being hired in droves. The growth rate of federal contracting is impossible to predict because of the intangible political forces at work. Fedmarket is betting that the trend will continue to be up; it's jobs, jobs, jobs, and the federal contracting industry can produce them faster than anyone else while at the same time meeting federal program goals quickly and cost-effectively.