President Biden’s White House staff is the largest since former President Richard Nixon’s and has seen a turnover rate of 77% since he took office in 2021.
The White House boasts 565 staffers at a price tag of nearly $61 million, a slight increase from the record-setting 560 staffers Biden had his first year in office, according to a report from Open the Books.
Biden is the first president to boast over 500 staffers since Nixon, the report noted, a staff that was so big that Time magazine declared in 1971 that it was growing with “startling rapidity.”
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First Lady Jill Biden’s staff has ballooned to 24 in 2024, matching the often-criticized count of former First Lady Michelle Obama’s staff in 2009 and more than doubling the number on hand for former First Lady Melania Trump, which maxed out at 11.
The first lady’s staff, which includes advisers in foreign policy, education and healthcare, comes in at a price tag of $2.5 million, the report notes.
The staff employed by President Biden far outstrips the number on hand at the same time in the presidencies of his immediate predecessors, with former President Donald Trump employing a staff of 413 in Fiscal Year 2020, and former President Barack Obama boasting a staff of 468 in Fiscal Year 2012.
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Meanwhile, the president’s current payroll of $60.8 million also outstrips the highs seen under both Trump and Obama, with Obama’s highest payroll coming in at an inflation-adjusted $58.3 million, and Trump’s at an inflation-adjusted $52.2 million.
Biden’s highest paid staffer is Michelle Barrans, an associate counsel who is “on detail” from the Securities and Exchange Commission and receives a salary of $251,258. The second-highest-paid is Farah Ahmad, a special advisor for economic development, who pulls in $191,900.
But Biden has also seen overwhelming turnover since he took office in 2021, with 435 of the initial 560 employees having left from when the numbers were first reported.
Reached for comment by Fox News Digital, a White House spokesperson acknowledged a nine percent increase in staff from last year, noting that the increase was “primarily driven by building out teams with a certain policy focus, such as the Office of Pandemic Preparedness & Response Policy and the Office of Gun Violence Prevention.”
“Over the last year, the White House also filled vacancies across various departments — and these vacancies were not reflected in the July 1, 2023, report,” the spokesperson added.
