That's more than the civilian Federal workforce (though only one sixth of a big sector like manufacturing). (Also, now that I say that, I have no idea where the people doing IT for the Federal government fall in that distinction, just that the government has 2.5 million people working for it and IT has a little more than 2.5 million people in the sector.)

I don't know. I still tell high school kids it's a decent career path, though I advise them to try systems administration rather than programming. Programming is probably not a great career path in the US nowadays.