Different Standards for Comparison

The administration’s statement regarding the federal pay raise reflects a shift from the standards that the 1990 federal pay law-which still officially governs federal pay-setting-laid out to determine annual raises. In addition, the administration statement cited a recent Office of Personnel Management survey showing that most employees are satisfied with their pay and pointed out that the federal “quit rate”-the rate at which federal employees leave the government voluntarily-is at what it termed an all-time low of 1.7 percent, which it said is “well below the average quit rate in private enterprise.” That law created a system of across-the-board raises based on an ECI measure of private sector wage growth, plus locality pay based on local pay gaps–not inflation, employee satisfaction or quit rates. Similarly, the law does not mention parity with raises for uniformed military personnel, which congressional sponsors of the 4.1 percent figure use as the basis for boosting the raise to that amount.