Federal employees received raises averaging 4.6 and 5.2 percent in 2023 and 2024. Image: William Sawalich/Shutterstock
By: FEDweek StaffThe first formal proposal for the January 2025 federal employee raise has been introduced in both the House and Senate, recommending an increase of 7.4 percent.
The Federal Adjustment of Income Rates Act, or FAIR Act, is the latest in a series of annual bills of the same name offered in advance of the White House’s budget proposal, seeking to put a higher number for the next raise into discussion during the congressional budget cycle.
House sponsor Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., noted that while federal employees received raises averaging 4.6 and 5.2 percent in 2023 and 2024 — the former the largest since 2002 and the latter the largest since 1980 — raises “have failed to keep pace with rising labor and living costs” over time, with the latest official measure of the pay gap with comparable private sector jobs of 27.5 percent.
The annual bill typically draws the support of some other Democrats in Congress as well as from federal employee organizations, as did the latest one on its introduction.
The White House budget proposal, typically submitted in early February, is not expected until a month or more later since Congress still has not finished last year’s cycle; it instead has approved only temporary funding for agencies, some through March 1 and others through March 8.
Each year during his term Biden has proposed for the next year’s raise a figure generated by a federal pay law, linked to an employment cost index measure of private sector wage growth. For 2025, the pertinent figure, announced last fall, is 4.5 percent.
In each year Congress in turn has been silent on the raise, allowing Biden’s recommendation to take effect by default.
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