Harry Potter and the Big State

Is the Ministry of Magic heading for a fiscal crash?

“What was Aragorn’s tax policy?’ GRR Martin used to ask about the Lord of the Rings. We might ask the same about the Harry Potter books. How big is the Ministry of Magic? How is it funded? Will it crowd out any other economic activity? Is there any other economic activity in the wizarding world anyway? And why is it in constant demographic crisis?

There are interesting pieces out there about the wizarding population of Britain in the books. While at times Rowling has suggested Hogwarts might have 600 pupils, a closer analysis suggests it is a lot smaller – possibly as few as 40 pupils a year (the size of the dormitories suggest 5 boys and 5 girls per year per house) . Hogwarts is the only school, allowing for some home schooling and longer wizard lives (eg Dumbledore is about 110 and has a robustly fit brother), the total population looks unlikely to exceed 5000 (at times Rowling herself has suggested 3000)

This makes the wizarding population broadly similar to the town of Keswick in Cumbria. But with a full Ministry to run affairs. Other ‘public sector’ institutions include Hogwarts itself (which is free) and St Mungo’s. Indeed, reading the Harry Potter books, pretty much everyone seems to work in the public sector. 54 characters living during the period of the main books have named occupations. Of these, 25 work in the Ministry, 17 in Hogwarts and only 12 in the private sector. A further 21 are either not working (eg Lucius Malfoy) or unknown.

Surely the wizarding world can’t really be over 80% employed by the State, with a labour participation rate of barely 70%, equivalent to almost the lowest rate in the Muggle OECD? The UK has about 10% of the population working in the wider public sector. Even JK Rowling’s adopted country Scotland doesn’t quite reach 80%. Of course, the plot is based around the school and the political struggle with Voldemort, so the people named are bound to come more from this background. Is it possible to come up with a picture from the bottom up of how large the wizarding State is?

The Ministry of Magic is huge – 10 stories underground. On his first visit, Harry notices “Every few seconds a witch or wizard would emerge from one of the left-hand fireplaces with a soft whoosh; on the right-hand side, short queues of wizards were forming before each fireplace, waiting to depart”. Some of these might be non employees visiting to deal with the Ministry bureaucracy, but even if this were a short rush hour period and there were three fireplaces on each side, this suggests throughput of a couple of thousand in each direction every hour.

The Ministry has 7 departments and the Potter wiki names 45 offices in total. Arthur Weasley’s Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office is one of the lowest status parts of the Ministry and contains just him and an assistant. Others like the Auror Office seem large. Given the size of the Ministry building, it seems plausible there are at least 500 people working there - given the size of the ‘rush hour’ it could be much more.

St Mungos is the only hospital in Britain for witches and wizards (and Muggles affected by them). It too is large – a five story building with 49 wards. This too suggests a staff of easily 200. Incidentally, this suggests, even with only 2 patients a ward, proportionately more than ten times as many beds per head of population than in the muggle UK and three times the number in Germany. The leisurely long stays in hospital suggest a nostalgia for the more relaxed NHS of the 1960s and 1970s, and indeed 1970s sitcoms like Only When I Laugh.

By contrast, Hogwarts is run on a surprisingly thin staff. There are only 17 Hogwarts staff named across the books, and this includes multiple holders of the most unlucky post, the Defence against the Dark Arts teacher. Hogwarts in general seems to involve much less teaching and much more homework than the typical Muggle school.

The only other state institution mentioned is the prison of Azkaban, which appears to be staffed largely or completely by Dementors. This prison population seems quite large, with the 17 suggested in some sources as being imprisoned at the time of the 1996 breakout alone proportionately more than the current UK prison population.

Indeed it is only the availability of house elves and Dementors that prevents the number of wizards employed in the public sector growing even larger. The numbers above suggest there could easily be 700-750 in total employed in the public sector – pushing 15% of the entire wizarding population.

Not only are the numbers high, but the status of public sector jobs seems higher too. The Weasleys are not pleased when Fred and George flunk their exams and decide to set up a shop; Tom Riddle sees going to work at Borgin and Burkes as distinctly second best compared to teaching at Hogwarts. This reflects, perhaps, a wider prejudice of the author, In the wider world too, the nastiest Muggle character, Vernon Dursley, is employed in the dubious field of manufacturing.

The size of the wizarding state is all the more striking given it doesn’t seem to have social services (there are examples of poverty among poor families like the elderly like Bathilda Bagshot, and the Weasleys are, of course, very poor by wizarding standards). There is no standing army, and the education system seems extremely lean by Muggle comparisons.

The education system could help explain the stubbornly low wizard birth rate. The Weasleys are complete outliers, with most characters in the books having one or no children. Pure blood wizard families are constantly dying out, with the ranks of wizards constantly replenished by half blood or the fully muggle born – perhaps some early 1990s subtle messaging about the benefits of immigration. https://www.smithdtyler.com/2022/12/population-dynamics-in-harry-potter.html

A wizard mother is not only faced with the usual challenges of having a baby, but free education does not kick in until 11. In the period between 7-11, families are faced with the challenge of ensuring their children’s magic skills are not revealed to Muggles, with strong legal sanctions, presumably on the parents up to the age of 11. It’s not surprising large families don’t look an attractive proposition for most. On the other hand, wizard family life seems to have been completely untouched by the spectre of family breakdown that has blighted much of Muggle England. Awful things happen to children in the stories, but the foundations of family life remain strong - perhaps part of the books’ powerful appeal.

The Ministry of Magic also reflects perhaps the nostalgia of a well meaning leftist of the 1990s for the British state in the pre-Thatcher era – combined with a strong commitment to international cooperation and laws. While wizards and Muggles have learned from eachother, there is no sign of wizards showing interest in New Public Management. Maintenance workers in the Ministry of Magic like Reg Cattermole are full employees, not working in contracted out services. Perhaps the Dementors of Azkaban are an early experiment with wizard outsourcing, with the hero Dumbledore duly warning of the risks.

Indeed the whole tone of the Ministry is somewhat paternalistic, with multiple cosy departments more or less doing their own thing under somewhat random central supervision. It has something of the feel of the defence and intelligence bureaucracies of the 60s portrayed in early Len Deighton novels.

The wizarding state has also clearly escaped the waves of privatisation that British leftists disliked so much. Transport is mainly controlled by the Ministry – certainly the Portkey and Floo network and the trains (Hogwarts Express) – with only the Knight Bus apparently privately operated. And indeed Rowling was 30 years ahead of her time is foreseeing the main sport, Quidditch, being run out of the Ministry, long ahead of the current Government’s important plans to bring in a Football Regulator.

How is all of this paid for? We seem to have a large State network of paid employees, plus generous pensions (Slughorn seems to have been living comfortably in retirement) with no evidence of any tax. There clearly is a wizarding economy, with a heavily regulated private sector (rules on the thickness of cauldrons; what sort of spells can be sold in a joke shop). There are craftsmen like Ollivander, raw materials for whose wands (eg unicorn tail hair) fetch a decent price. Shops, taverns and Gringotts are the main other businesses mentioned.

Nobody appears to farm (though plenty garden). One of the five exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration states food may not be created out of nothing, but it can be multiplied, so presumably a small quantity of ingredients purchased from Muggles will be enough. The same law presumably doesn’t allow gold to be multiplied, or there would be rampant inflation (and no doubt a whole new section of the Ministry to regulate it).

So do Wizards trade with Muggles? There must be some of this, as Gringott’s changes wizard and Muggle money. Wizards occasionally buy Muggle clothes, and Ron presumably pays for his driving lessons. We know some sell goods to Muggles – occasionally tricking them for a joke by selling them magically shrinking keys. And Kingsley Shacklebolt holds down a job in the Muggle PM’s office, for which he is presumably paid. It is possible that the entire magic world is funded by a trade surplus with the Muggle world, but there is surprisingly little sign of it (and you would expect this also to be regulated).

An alternative to high tax or a structural trade deficit is a chronic fiscal deficit. Is the mysterious power of characters like Lucius Malfoy because he and the other older families have a hold over the Ministry by lending to fund the ever expanding size of the state? Voldemort seems to be able to take over Gringott’s without too much difficulty, suggesting it isn’t quite playing the role of the Iron Bank of Bravos in Game of Thrones. Are families like the Malfoys playing instead the role of bankers to the Ministry as the Lannisters support Robert Baratheon? Is the wizarding world heading for a comparable fiscal crisis?

Whatever the truth of these speculation, the overwhelming sense of the public sector in the wizard world from a muggle perspective is one of overwhelming nostalgia, a sign perhaps of the sort of government well meaning characters like Rowling would choose given half a chance¹.

Happy Christmas to all my readers! I hope you are enjoying things. A subscription to Wallenstein’s Camp makes an ideal present - you don’t even have to care that much about the recipient, as you can still get the content for free…

1. Many thanks to my kids for suggesting this article, and for some suggestions/corrections. Any remaining errors are mine