The Senate Appropriations Committee has followed the House’s lead regarding the January 2008 federal pay raise, specifying an average GS increase of 3.5 percent. The measure doesn’t specify how much of the raise would be paid out across-the-board and how much would be divided up as locality pay, but in past similar situations, 1 percentage point has been carved out for locality pay and the rest paid across-the-board. Under the practice used in recent years, wage grade employees get the same increase as GS employees in their local area.