Biden signed an EO to give federal workers an average pay raise starting in January of 5.2%
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as
www.whitehouse.gov
The measure confirms that the federal workforce will see its largest pay increase in more than 40 years.
www.govexec.com
This is after a 4.6% pay raise in 2023...
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Dec. 23 to make the average 4.6% federal pay raise official for civilian employees. But the exact raise you get depends on where you work.
federalnewsnetwork.com
"Despite the fact that federal agencies are still operating without a full budget, Biden’s order cements the pay raise for 2024. Unless Congress quibbles with Biden’s figure in another CR or in the Financial Services and General Government bill, the pay raise defers to the President’s authority."
It’s the largest base pay increase since the Carter administration nearly 40 years ago.
www.federaltimes.com
Most federal workers still work from home part time...
The 2023 FEVS results show that most federal employees are still teleworking after the pandemic.
www.fedsmith.com
Meanwhile, social security recipients will get a 3.2% cost of living adjustment in 2024 while the costs of food, shelter and energy have skyrocketed.
Biden sure is good at spending other people's money. The bloated fed balloons further.
It’s easy to bash federal workers and use the worst abuses to define the entire workforce but many are unpolitical professionals including scientists, foreign policy experts etc who work hard to make systems run smoothly so we aren’t even aware of it. For example, the career civil service that collects and organizes data for briefings, does all the groundwork for an international event, makes sure that the political appointees do not commit any major faux pas, and that is just in the foreign service.
While I get that there are abuses in the system, I don’t think people realize that a) these are people like any people with a job to do and a family to feed, working all around the country and b) you are most likely a beneficiary of their work without even realizing it. In an era when Congress is incompetent and gridlocked and partisan, these people manage to keep things running in spite of it.
Teleworking, from an employers point of view, can often save money in maintenance or rental physical space, utilities, etc. for jobs that aren’t dependent on a physical presence. So…why bash that?
The other thing is that every tine they get an increase…people *****. But their salary, particularly in upper level professional fields, is not competing with the private sector and
in fact, the pay gap is widening.
In recent years, data comparing federal government and private sector compensation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics had indicated that the gap has slowly trended downward, with federal workers earning 22.47% less on average than private sector workers in similar jobs in 2021. But this year, the pay disparity spiked to 24.09%.
It’s easy to point to the abuses and waste in the system, and we all likely know of some examples. When I worked at NASA, 34 years ago, the director of our unit, a political appointee, was a complete buffoon who played video games on his computer during work. Being a political appointee, there wasn’t much you could do about it and it was thanks to the professionals under him, who were serious about their mission, that things got done.
The other thing many don’t realize is that many of the rules that make it hard to fire civil servants also means it is harder to fire people for political reasons and replace them with political people every time a new administration comes into power. Imagine the loss of expertise and institutional and project memory that would be lost and have to be rebuilt every four years? ( and btw, I don’t believe in the Deep State crap…it’s an excuse completely politicize the civil service).
All that doesn’t mean there aren’t issues to address, but they deserve a pay raise like any other professional and when you have such a pay gap, you struggle to attract good people. It shouldn’t be pitched as a Social Security vs Federal Workers issue either. Both need increases and it isn’t a zero sum equation.