Federal employee organizations, with the backing of some Democratic members of Congress, are advocating for a 7.4 percent raise for next January. Image: ImagePixel/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffPresident Biden has recommended that federal employees receive a 2 percent pay raise in January 2025, a figure well below those he recommended in his prior budgets and also a departure from his prior practice of recommending the figure indicated by a federal pay law.
“This increase builds on the average pay increases of 5.2 percent for 2024, 4.6 percent for 2023, and 2.7 percent for 2022. It illustrates the Administration’s continued strong commitment to the civil service, reflecting the need to attract the talent necessary to serve Americans and recognizing the fiscal constraints Federal agencies face,” says a budget document.
The increase paid earlier this year had been the largest since 1980 and the one of 2023 had been the largest since 2002. In recommending those raises as well as the 2.7 percent for 2022—all three of which Congress allowed to take effect by default by taking no position—Biden had followed a formula under federal pay law tied to the employment cost index measure of private sector wage growth (not inflation). For 2025, the indicated figure is 4.5 percent.
The 2021 raise, the last determined under the Trump administration, had been 1 percent. A 2 percent raise for 2025 would fall back within the general 1-3 percent range of years immediately before that.
Federal employee organizations, with the backing of some Democratic members of Congress, are advocating for a 7.4 percent raise for next January, saying that pay rates remain behind despite the notably larger increases of recent years.
The AFGE union for example said it was “extremely disappointed” at the recommendation for what it called a “paltry” 2 percent, especially since the budget seeks 4.5 percent for military personnel. The two raises commonly move in tandem under the informal principle of “pay parity” between them.
“This below-market pay increase fails to reflect trends in the private sector, where wages and salaries have risen, and unemployment rates are low. Nor does it keep up with persistent inflation, leaving civil servants with diminished purchasing power,” said NARFE president William Shackelford.
The budget does not address whether a 2 percent raise, should Congress consent to one either actively or by default, would be paid entirely across the board or whether part would be split off for variable locality pay. That determination would be made later in the budget process, most likely in a late-summer letter from the White House to Congress.
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