With the 2010 federal pay raises taking effect as of January 3 for most federal employees, there will be a continued tightening of the pay caps affecting many higher-level salary systems as well as managers high up in the GS step system.
The GS raises range from about 1.8 percent in lower-paid localities to about 2.6 percent in the locality getting the largest raise, Washington-Baltimore, but a separate mechanism applies for determining pay caps. Those caps are linked to Executive Schedule rates for political appointees, which are going up by 1.5 percent (and rounded to the nearest $100). That’s the amount of the GS across-the-board component, which also acts to limit the size of Executive Schedule increases.
GS employees at level 15 in 18 of the 32 GS localities are going to be affected by a pay cap in 2010, up from 16 localities in 2009. Their pay will be capped at $155,500. Other caps also will be affecting increasing numbers of employees in high-level systems including the SES, senior professionals, administrative law judges and administrative appeals judges and board of contract appeals members.
The minimum rate of basic pay for the Senior Executive Service (SES) rate range will $119,554. The maximum rate of basic pay for the SES will be $179,700 (EX-II) for SES members covered by a certified SES performance appraisal system and $165,300 (EX-III) for SES members covered by an SES performance appraisal system that has not been certified. The same rates apply to senior professionals—senior level and senior scientific and technical positions.
There will be no raise for members of Congress, who early in 2009 voted to reject an increase, which otherwise would have worked out to be 1.5 percent. In many years in which Congress declined a raise, it also has frozen the Executive Schedule rates, making the pay compression issue even more severe.
The new pay tables are at www.opm.gov/oca.
