  We perform a systematic study on the spin decomposition of an electron in QED
at one-loop order. It is found that the electron orbital angular momentum
defined in Jaffe-Manohar and Ji spin sum rules agrees with each other, and the
so-called potential angular momentum vanishes at this order. The calculations
are performed in both dimensional regularization and Pauli-Villars
regularization for the ultraviolet divergences, and they lead to consistent
results. We further investigate the calculations in terms of light-front wave
functions, and find a missing contribution from the instantaneous interaction
in light-front quantization. This clarifies the confusing issues raised
recently in the literature on the spin decomposition of an electron, and will
help to consolidate the spin physics program for nucleons in QCD.
