NASA Budgetary Analysis Payroll Forecast

As with any massive bureaucratic entity in which thousands of employees work collaboratively on hundreds of individual projects, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) devotes a healthy percentage of its annual budget to maintaining its permanent and temporary workforce. With an annual operating budget of approximately $17.8 billion for fiscal year 2013, calculating the exact amount paid as compensation to employees is a difficult prospect, but using conservative estimates which take into account budget items like Space Operations ($4 billion) and Cross-Agency Support ($2.8 billion), it is likely that NASA spends well in excess of $12 billion per year on salaries, pensions, and other employee-generated costs. This figure aligns with previous estimates made by NASA in fiscal year 2006, when the agency stated in its annual NASA Office of the Inspector General budget request that

"82.7% of the proposed budget is dedicated to personnel and related costs, including salaries, benefits, monetary awards, worker's compensation, transportation subsidies and training, as well as the government's contributions for Social Security, Medicare, health and life insurance, retirement accounts, matching contributions to Thrift Savings Plan accounts, the required 25% law enforcement availability pay for criminal investigators, and permanent change of station costs."

With the federal government already targeting NASA for budget cuts in the wake of a devastating and prolonged recession, the notion of instituting a pay raise for employees, whether it be 2%, 4%, or 5%, would appear to be a nonstarter. As a hypothetical...

As renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recently wrote in testimony provided to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, "right now, NASA's annual budget is half a penny on your tax dollar & #8230; (but) for twice that -- a penny on a dollar -- we can transform the country from a sullen, dispirited nation, weary of economic struggle, to one where it has reclaimed its 20th century birthright to dream of tomorrow" (2012). Lofty abstractions aside, it stands to reason that the productivity of an agency like NASA could be noticeably increased by virtue of the pay raises described above, because when considered in conjunction with NASA's existing mandate to streamline its operations and mandate efficiency, they funds would likely be allocated appropriately.
2. Trend Analysis

During the last five years the federal government has been forced to reckon with certain inescapable economic realities, and as such the portion of the federal budget dedicated to NASA has trended downward during this time. As part of the agency's ongoing effort to tighten the proverbial belt, eliminating inefficient or outdated programs while diverting resources to more fruitful projects, NASA's total expenditures have decreased slightly during the last five years, but prestigious initiatives such as the Space Shuttle have been shuttered. The following chart depicts NASA's budget history as a percentage of the…