A 5.2 percent increase would be the largest since 4.8 percent was paid in 2000 and would follow an average 4.6 percent raise paid effective in January of this year. Image: William Sawalich/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffBoth the House and the Senate versions of a key spending bill effectively endorse the 5.2 percent raise that President Biden has recommended to be paid to federal employees in January.
The Appropriations Committees of both chambers last week approved their general government spending bill for the upcoming fiscal year with no mention of a raise. That would continue the pattern of most recent years of Congress taking no position and therefore allowing for the President to set a raise by default.
A 5.2 percent increase would be the largest since 4.8 percent was paid in 2000 and would follow an average 4.6 percent raise paid effective in January of this year.
Congress could yet step into the process by designating its own raise number as the bills undergo floor voting. However, the common practice has been that no such amendments are offered after committee approval.
Barring a change during floor voting, the next step would be a message from Biden to Congress—due by the end of August and typically coming late in that month—stating his intention to set a raise by default if Congress remains silent through the end of the calendar year.
That message almost certainly would repeat the recommendation in his original budget proposal for 5.2 percent. It also likely would specify an intent to split the raise between across-the-board and locality pay components—as is commonly done except when the raise figure is notably low.
A split would result in the 5.2 percent figure becoming an average, with amounts varying among the GS locality zones. (While the action technically applies only to GS employees, for many years raises of wage grade employees, who fall under a separate locality-based system, have been linked to the local GS amount.)
Last August, for example, Biden said that he would divide the 4.6 percent raise pending for January of this year as 4.1 percent across the board and the money for the other 0.5 percentage points divided among the localities. That ultimately resulted in raises ranging by locality from 4.37 to 5.15 percent.
Any law enacted after that message would override it, however.
In recommending 5.2 percent in his early-year budget proposal, Biden continued the pattern of his first two years in office of backing a figure resulting from an employment cost index measure of private sector wage growth (not inflation) specified in the pay law. That law calls for using that indicated figure as the across the board component, with locality increases to be added on top; however, in many years the figure has been used for the entirety of the raise, with some carved out for locality pay.
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