Federal workers getting pay hike
Raises for nearly 2.2 million employees average 5.2% in biggest increase since 1980
Federal employees will receive pay raises averaging 5.2% — more in some high-salary areas — under an order President Joe Biden signed Thursday that delivers the biggest increase to U.S. government workers since the Carter administration.
The salary hike for the federal civilian workforce of close to 2.2 million people is the heftiest since a 9.1% average raise in 1980. It’s 0.6 percentage points higher than last year’s increase, which itself was the highest in two decades, and will take effect in the first full pay period of 2024, starting Jan. 14 for most federal employees.
The military is set to receive a comparable increase in January in the $886 billion defense bill Congress approved this month.
Biden’s executive order is the final step in the annual process of determining how much government workers will be paid the following year. That process has often featured a divisive debate in Congress over the value of federal workers and what they should earn compared with their private sector counterparts.
Republicans have long asserted people employed by private companies are paid significantly less than federal workers. Democrats, who count the unions representing federal employees as key allies, point to studies concluding the opposite.
One such report — published in November by the Federal Salary Council, a group of government labor and management leaders — concluded federal salaries on average lag 27.5% behind those of comparable private sector jobs. Such studies have never settled the issue, however, as the debate often seems to reflect a broader philosophical clash over the role of government in American society.
Congress has in some years adjusted the annual White House proposal on federal pay up or down. But this year, after Biden proposed the 5.2% raise in March in his budget for fiscal 2024, Republicans in Congress — engulfed for months in a partisan battle over raising the country’s debt limit and then in an internal struggle over the House speakership — have been silent on the raise this year.
Absent any action by Congress, the recommended raise goes into effect by default. Most lawmakers have already left Washington for the holidays, signaling the end of the legislative year and allowing Biden to finalize the pay hike with Thursday’s executive order.
Since about 85% of the federal workforce is outside the Washington region, the pay increase “will benefit families and lift economies in every single state,” Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement.
The raise is likely to continue the partnership that the Biden White House has forged with the unions representing federal workers. The administration has supported continued telework policies across most of the government that accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, and hiring has intensified at many agencies.