Federal Register by the Numbers

[This blog post was written by OFR intern Lissa N. Snyders]

Our users frequently ask for information about Office of the Federal Register (OFR) publications. Publication statistics for the Federal Register and the Code of Federal Regulations are compiled annually and posted to the Tutorials, History, and Statistics section of our website. This includes information like the total number of pages for each publication and the number of Rules and Proposed Rules printed each year.

We have the most data available for the years 1976-2014. Within these years, 1980 has had the most published Rules to date with 7,745 Rules. The year with the largest number of Proposed Rules published to date is 1979 with 5,824 Proposed Rules. The years with the largest numbers of pages for each category to date are shown in the table below:

The May 3, 2002 issue is the largest single issue of the Federal Register ever published. Totaling 7,969 pages, this issue was split into 12 books (pictured below) to facilitate the printing process.

This issue also contained the single largest document (6,653 pages) – A report on the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s proposed settlement in United States v. Microsoft Corporation. The manuscript filed with our office was more than 10,000 pages long.

When looking at the statistics, keep in mind that the first year (1936) is a partial year since publication did not begin until March of that year. The number of corrections and blank pages are also identified for certain years. You can check out more publication facts in our 2010 Federal Register Factsheet, but the most current data is found in the Statistics section of our website, linked above.

Be sure to check our website each year for updated publication statistics and follow @FedRegister on Twitter for additional information about our publications.