Who Gets the
Federal Money

Shade each state by federal prime-award dollars per resident and the real geography appears. It is not California and Texas - they are big because they are populous. It is the contractor beltway (the District, Virginia, Maryland), where the primes keep their headquarters, and the national-lab states like New Mexico, where a single weapons or energy contract dwarfs the local economy. Nationally the rate runs about $8,657 per resident; the darkest states below sit many times above that.

Every state, in a table

State	Total ($B)	Per resident
District of Columbia DC	60	$89,552
New Mexico NM	25	$11,905
Alaska AK	5.9	$8,082
Virginia VA	66	$7,586
Hawaii HI	10	$7,143
Maryland MD	43	$6,935
Massachusetts MA	39	$5,571
Connecticut CT	20	$5,556
Alabama AL	28	$5,490
Rhode Island RI	6	$5,455
Colorado CO	30	$5,172
Mississippi MS	15	$5,172
West Virginia WV	9	$5,000
Delaware DE	5	$5,000
Texas TX	151	$4,951
Vermont VT	3.2	$4,923
Washington WA	38	$4,872
Wyoming WY	2.8	$4,828
Louisiana LA	22	$4,783
Utah UT	16	$4,706
New York NY	92	$4,694
Pennsylvania PA	61	$4,692
California CA	182	$4,667
Kentucky KY	21	$4,667
New Hampshire NH	6.5	$4,643
Maine ME	6.5	$4,643
North Dakota ND	3.6	$4,615
Montana MT	5	$4,545
Missouri MO	28	$4,516
Oklahoma OK	18	$4,500
Kansas KS	13	$4,483
Arkansas AR	13	$4,333
Oregon OR	18	$4,286
Nebraska NE	8.5	$4,250
Florida FL	96	$4,248
Tennessee TN	30	$4,225
South Dakota SD	3.8	$4,222
Minnesota MN	24	$4,211
Arizona AZ	31	$4,189
Ohio OH	49	$4,153
Georgia GA	45	$4,128
Illinois IL	52	$4,127
Iowa IA	13	$4,063
Michigan MI	40	$4,000
Indiana IN	27	$3,971
South Carolina SC	21	$3,962
Idaho ID	7.5	$3,947
Wisconsin WI	23	$3,898
North Carolina NC	41	$3,832
Nevada NV	12	$3,750
New Jersey NJ	34	$3,656

Illustrative rollup by primary place of performance. Per resident = state prime-award dollars divided by Census resident population (a curated population lookup, refreshed at ingest). The real swap re-runs this from the USAspending archive place-of-performance state field - see Methodology.

Drop the per-resident lens and the ranking flips to the obvious: the largest states pull the most federal money. California alone books $182B in prime awards. That is not a scandal - it is population. Which is exactly why the map above divides by residents: raw totals track the census, per-resident dollars track the contracts.

Top twelve states by total prime awards ($B)

Top twelve, in a table

State	Total ($B)	Per resident
California CA	182	$4,667
Texas TX	151	$4,951
Florida FL	96	$4,248
New York NY	92	$4,694
Virginia VA	66	$7,586
Pennsylvania PA	61	$4,692
District of Columbia DC	60	$89,552
Illinois IL	52	$4,127
Ohio OH	49	$4,153
Georgia GA	45	$4,128
Maryland MD	43	$6,935
North Carolina NC	41	$3,832

Of roughly $0.76T in prime contract dollars, the five largest firms alone book about 26%. Read the list and the buyer is obvious: the primes are the weapons houses, and the consultancies beneath them (Leidos, Booz Allen, SAIC) sell that same buyer its back office. This is not a market of thousands of vendors. It is a short table, and the same names sit at the top of it every year.

1. 01
   Lockheed Martin Defense

   via Dept of Defense
   $76.0B 10.0%
2. 02
   RTX (Raytheon) Defense

   via Dept of Defense
   $36.0B 4.7%
3. 03
   General Dynamics Defense

   via Dept of Defense
   $34.0B 4.5%
4. 04
   Boeing Defense

   via Dept of Defense
   $30.0B 4.0%
5. 05
   Northrop Grumman Defense

   via Dept of Defense
   $25.0B 3.3%
6. 06
   Leidos IT & services

   via Dept of Defense
   $15.0B 2.0%
7. 07
   Huntington Ingalls Shipbuilding

   via Dept of Defense
   $13.5B 1.8%
8. 08
   Booz Allen Hamilton IT & services

   via Dept of Defense
   $13.0B 1.7%
9. 09
   BAE Systems Defense

   via Dept of Defense
   $12.0B 1.6%
10. 10
    Humana Government Business Health

    via Dept of Defense
    $11.5B 1.5%
11. 11
    L3Harris Technologies Defense

    via Dept of Defense
    $11.0B 1.4%
12. 12
    SAIC IT & services

    via Dept of Defense
    $9.5B 1.3%
13. 13
    Pfizer Health

    via Dept of Health & Human Services
    $9.0B 1.2%
14. 14
    Deloitte IT & services

    via Dept of Health & Human Services
    $8.5B 1.1%
15. 15
    McKesson Health

    via Dept of Veterans Affairs
    $8.0B 1.1%

Share = percent of all FY2024 prime contract obligations. Recipients rolled up to ultimate parent. Illustrative figures - see Methodology and HANDOFF.md for the swap-point.

Split the roughly $0.76T in contract dollars by what they purchase, and the picture is unmistakably hard-power. Weapons & aircraft is the single largest bucket at 31%; add professional and IT services and health, and the top three sectors take 67% of every contract dollar. The government is, above all, a buyer of weapons and of the people who service the machine that buys them.

Prime contract dollars by sector (share of total)

31% 22% 14% 13% 12% 8%

• Weapons & aircraft 31% Aircraft, missiles, ordnance, combat vehicles, and their RDT&E
• Professional & IT services 22% Systems engineering, back-office IT, consulting, staffing
• R&D & everything else 14% Basic and applied research, energy, space, and the long tail
• Health & pharma 13% Drugs, vaccines, medical supply, managed-care administration
• Facilities & construction 12% Base operations, real property, environmental remediation
• Ships & marine 8% Shipbuilding, overhaul, and naval sustainment

Sectors, in a table

Sector	Contract $ ($B)	Share
Weapons & aircraft	232	30.6%
Professional & IT services	168	22.1%
R&D & everything else	110	14.5%
Health & pharma	96	12.7%
Facilities & construction	92	12.1%
Ships & marine	61	8.0%

Same dollars, sharper question: how many hands does each agency's money pass through? Energy routes most of its budget to a few national-lab operators; NASA and Treasury are nearly as top-heavy. Defense - the biggest buyer of all - actually spreads across far more names, and Veterans Affairs wider still. Size and grip are not the same thing. The dashed line is the average agency, 42% to its top five recipients.

Concentration = share of the agency's prime-award dollars going to its five largest recipients (rolled up to parent). Bars past the dashed average are shaded solid; the rest are outlined - the tag and the number carry the reading without relying on color. Illustrative.

Plot every major agency by how much it awards against how tightly it awards, and the two come apart. Health & Human Services is the largest buyer on the board yet spreads its money widely; Energy and NASA are a fraction of its size but route most of their budgets to a few national-lab and aerospace operators. Bigness and capture are different diseases - reading them on one axis hides that.

Every agency, in a table

Agency	Total	Top-5 share	Award lean
DOE Dept of Energy	$44B	62%	contract-led
TREAS Dept of the Treasury	$210B	58%	assistance-led
NASA National Aeronautics & Space Admin	$22B	55%	contract-led
SBA Small Business Administration	$35B	51%	assistance-led
USDA Dept of Agriculture	$205B	47%	assistance-led
DOL Dept of Labor	$68B	44%	assistance-led
HHS Dept of Health & Human Services	$1.18T	42%	assistance-led
DOT Dept of Transportation	$95B	41%	assistance-led
HUD Dept of Housing & Urban Development	$72B	38%	assistance-led
DOS Dept of State	$30B	36%	mixed
ED Dept of Education	$175B	34%	assistance-led
DoD Dept of Defense	$456B	33%	contract-led
DOJ Dept of Justice	$20B	33%	mixed
DHS Dept of Homeland Security	$28B	31%	contract-led
VA Dept of Veterans Affairs	$118B	24%	mixed

Every agency does one of two things with its money: it buys (contracts) or it gives (assistance - grants, direct payments). Almost none does both. Defense, Energy and NASA sit hard against the contract wall; Education, Labor and Treasury are nearly pure assistance. Of the fifteen largest awarders, 4 are overwhelmingly buyers and 8 overwhelmingly granters - the middle is thin.

Award mix, in a table

Agency	Contracts	Assistance
DoD Dept of Defense	92%	8%
DOE Dept of Energy	88%	12%
NASA National Aeronautics & Space Admin	82%	18%
DHS Dept of Homeland Security	68%	32%
DOS Dept of State	55%	45%
VA Dept of Veterans Affairs	52%	48%
DOJ Dept of Justice	45%	55%
DOT Dept of Transportation	12%	88%
HHS Dept of Health & Human Services	9%	91%
HUD Dept of Housing & Urban Development	9%	91%
ED Dept of Education	8%	92%
USDA Dept of Agriculture	7%	93%
TREAS Dept of the Treasury	6%	94%
DOL Dept of Labor	6%	94%
SBA Small Business Administration	5%	95%

Stack the two families of award since 2008 and one of them barely moves. Contract dollars sit near $0.76T a year, war or peace - the buying machine runs at a steady idle. Assistance is the earthquake: the Recovery Act lifts it in 2009-10, then the pandemic sends it past $2.38T in 2021 alone. When people say federal spending exploded, this purple band is what they are pointing at.

Line up all ~640k prime recipients from largest to smallest and ask where the money actually sits. The top 1% - about 6,400 recipients - hold 64 cents of every dollar. The tens of thousands of small recipients in the tail split what is left. Federal spending is not a broad shower falling evenly; it is a firehose, and only a few names stand in front of it.