More than 118,000 Defense Department employees paid through the Federal Wage System finally are set to receive their long-delayed 2024 pay raises.
The Department of Defense Wage Committee met Nov. 25 and approved publication of 2024 updates to about 1,600 wage schedules covering 250 wage areas. It was the first meeting this year of the five-member committee, on which AFGE holds one of the two labor seats.
AFGE Public Policy Director Jacqueline Simon attributed the delay in approving the pay adjustments to a decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in March to pause all meetings of its advisory committees pending a larger review.
“The vast majority of Wage Grade federal employees have not received their 2024 pay increase yet. They’ve been held up because Secretary Hegseth paused all advisory committees, and the DoD Wage Committee is an advisory committee, and unless the DoD Wage Committee meets and approves new wage schedules, they can’t be implemented,” Simon said.
More than 118,000 DoD employees in both appropriated and non-appropriated positions were paid under the Federal Wage System as of September 2024. The last pay adjustment they received was in 2023.
Now that the DoD Wage Committee has acted, work will begin to incorporate the new pay scales into the various payroll systems and adjust the wage area boundaries to reflect the updated criteria.
Raises will be retroactive to when they should have taken effect last year, although it could be as late as January 2026 before all employees see the increases reflected in their paychecks, Simon said.
“There's a light at the end of the tunnel. I know it’s frustrating, it’s been frustrating all year, but we’re finally there,” she said.
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