The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) last week issued the final rule implementing a locality pay raise AFGE sought for nearly 33,000 federal employees.
Those working in Fresno, Calif., Reno, Nev., Rochester, New York, and Spokane, Wash. are slated to get a locality pay raise on Jan. 1, 2024. New counties will also be added to 43 existing localities, so those working and living in these counties will get a locality pay bump as well.
This is a direct result of AFGE pushing the Biden administration to adopt the Federal Salary Council’s pro-labor recommendations that would increase pay for tens of thousands of General Schedule (GS) employees who in 2022 made 24.09% less than employees outside the federal government doing similar jobs.
The Federal Salary Council is an advisory body that provides recommendations to the administration on the federal employee locality pay program. It comprises three presidential appointees and representatives from five federal employee unions, including AFGE.
Feds Make 27.54% Less Than Non-federal Counterparts
Meanwhile, new data shows the pay gap between federal workers and those outside the federal government doing similar jobs is getting wider, making it difficult for federal agencies to recruit and retain top talent.
According to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, federal employees earned an average of 27.54% less than their non-federal counterparts in 2023. That’s a 3.45 percentage point increase in the pay gap from 24.09% in 2022, and a 5.07 percentage point increase from 22.47% in 2021.
The updated number was reported at a meeting of the Federal Salary Council, which also recommended adding Wyandot County, Ohio, to the Columbus locality pay area and Yuma County, Ariz., to the Phoenix locality pay area. It did not propose new locality pay areas for 2025.
AFGE has been pushing for significant pay increase for federal workers. Earlier this year we persuaded Congressman Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Senator Brian Shatz, D-Hawaii to introduce the Federal Adjustment of Income Rates (FAIR) Act with an 8.7% raise for 2024 so that the gap could get smaller, not bigger.
The disparity should have been closed decades ago after Congress passed the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA) in 1990 to reduce the pay gap to 5% using the principle of local labor market comparability, not cost of living. Government workers should be paid about the same as those doing similar work locally in the private sector. But successive administrations and Congresses have failed to adhere to the principle, causing federal workers’ pay to lag behind what their counterparts are paid in the private sector and state and local government.
5.2% raise
President Biden plans to give federal workers a 5.2% raise next year, the largest pay hike since Jimmy Carter was president over 40 years ago. The raise would be divided between a 4.7% across-the-board increase and an average locality adjustment of 0.5%.
While the increase is significant, it’s still not enough to make a dent in the double-digit pay gap between federal and non-federal workers. That’s why we’re still fighting for the 8.7% pay raise called for in the FAIR Act.
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