3.1 Percent Raise Targeted

Federal employees stand to get a 3.1 percent raise in January 2006 under a spending bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee. The panel once again backed parity between raises for federal employees and uniformed military personnel, who are due a 3.1 percent raise under a pay-setting law affecting them. The White House had recommended a 2.3 percent increase for federal workers, arguing that the government has numerous special pay authorities to address any recruiting and retention problems, but a bipartisan group of members of the Appropriations panel succeeded in enacting pay parity once again, as they have for all but a few years of the past two decades. The raise would be government-wide, including at the Defense and Homeland Security departments, which are phasing in new pay systems for their employees; the first affected employees there would not see any effect of those changes until 2007 in both cases. The amount presumably would be split into across-the-board and locality components, although that decision typically isn’t made until late in a year.