Pay Gap Remains Thorny Issue

Among the recommendations now pending before the President’s Pay Agent regarding the general schedule locality pay system is a plan to revise the data used to measure the pay gap between federal and private sector pay. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles the figures used for the locality pay system, is continuing to refine its methodology and incorporate new data to replace some figures that date as far back as 1994 and which have been statistically massaged since then. The Federal Salary Council has recommended that those improvements continue and favors phasing in the new data-which on average show federal pay is several percentage points closer to private sector pay than the old figures indicate. Under the 1990 federal pay reform law, pay gaps should have been closed to within 5 percent by now; however, because raises have not been funded as envisioned under the law, the 2004 federal raise would have to be an average 17.57 percent to comply. Cost is the major reason the raises haven’t been fully funded but another is the view-not unique to either political party-that the pay gap data are not reliable. The ongoing work at BLS could help address the reliability issue, but the cost issue would remain one for Congress and the White House to handle.