The president was apparently unmoved by federal employee groups and some House Democrats’ pleas to restore pay parity between the civilian and military workforces
By Eric Wagner
President Biden on Monday issued an executive order implementing his plan to provide civilian federal workers with an average 2 per cent pay raise next month.
As first proposed in his fiscal 2025 budget plan last March, the increase amounts to a 1.7 per cent across-the-board increase in basic pay, coupled with a 0.3 per cent average boost to locality pay. In a move that proved controversial among Biden’s Democratic colleagues, members of the armed services will see more than double the pay raise—4.5 per cent on average—in 2025, abandoning pay parity across the federal workforce.
The 2.0 per cent average pay increase marks the lowest federal employees have received since Biden took office in 2021. And it comes just a year after 2024’s pay raise of 5.2 per cent on average marked the largest federal workers have seen since the Carter administration.
The news comes despite efforts by federal employee groups and some House Democrats to convince the president to provide civilian federal workers with the same 4.5 per cent average pay raise that members of the military are set to receive next year.
The Office of Personnel Management published pay tables outlining the 2025 pay raise across all General Schedule pay grades and locality pay areas on its website Monday.
