5.2% pay raise proposal for federal employees in 2024
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Federal employees pay seems to lag inflation by 1-2yrs (ex benefits, retirement). I think some people worry about government unfairly outcompeting private sector businesses for employees, but these pay increases don't seem to be the mechanism by which that happens.
The people I know who find government (both state and federal) employment attractive do so because it offers a better work-life balance and, for state employees, the possibility of a pension. That or they're attracted to a specific agency or department's mission, which is not something that private groups can always compete with at all (e.g. when they reflect a regulatory role).
Student loan forgiveness is another one.
Still, I wonder if that's a major draw: federal employment numbers have been roughly stagnant for decades, and have declined on a per capita basis.
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
GS-15 for tech jobs tops out at $145k all-in, and you need to have a PhD in some levels to get there. This is analogous to a principal engineer in scope. Meanwhile, they can turn around at clear $500k if they know their stuff at a place that doesn't require clearances and has good free food and stuff.
Yes, the GS table maxes out at ~150k, but they are also allowed to do locality (in DC that was ~34k), and some agencies are allowed to have a recurring bonus to more closely match external pay.
0. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/principal-developer-salar...
Are there people who exist in this world who make $500k total comp? Yes, I never said there weren't.
Is that the norm, the average, or in any way common? No, of course not. The average, as listed at the top of that page, is $133,806 base pay, and $51,995 additional pay, for a total comp average of $185,801.
Some big tech companies pay higher than average, especially for exceptional people, so yes, you can scroll down and imagine unmentioned stock grants and come up with whatever number you want to, but focusing entirely on the high end of the exceptions as if that were common seems disingenuous.
The article mentions military members once, but that annual pay raise is part of a separate piece of legislation.
(The discrepancy between 2.85 total federal civilian employees and 2.1 million affected employees listed in the article is likely due to the fact that a minority but significant proportion of federal civilian employees are not on the GS pay scale.)
ORIGINAL COMMENT:
IIRC, the federal government employs around 24 million people.
Private employers everywhere in the US will have to follow along to remain competitive, so this is going to result in a 5.2% annual rate of increase in income for employees nationwide (give or take) through the end of next year.
Companies will likely try to pass this to customers in the form of price increases.
To me, this suggests inflation is nowhere near under control.
Supply chains are normalizing post COVID, energy costs are coming down, egg inflation was avian flu killing tens of millions of birds, and housing is lack of supply. There is also some evidence corporations are juicing profits under the guise of inflation.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12075
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/10/05/wage-price-...
u/jonathankoren‘s sibling comment also touches on this
Today, much of the inflation is cost-push instead of demand-pull like you described. Cars became expensive, not because suddenly everyone had money to go buy a car, or suddenly those peaky autoworkers caught a raise, but because the parts to make the cars didn’t exist because of supply chain problems brought on because of Covid lockdowns.
Eggs are expensive because chickens are dying of avian flu, not because undocumented laborers getting an extra nickel.
Same with oil, grain, pretty much everything.
Major cost of living components like housing have been going up rapidly for tens of millions of people in major metro areas for a decade. Employees wanted more money the whole damn time. They didn't get much willing movement there; they didn't have the leverage in the employment market. Legislatures in many areas stepped in instead after failing to see wages in most industries keep up.
It's not clear to me that this particular version of the feedback loop is inherently bad long-term or unstable. Why should I assume it's going to spiral out of control rather than eventually slowly grind to a new equilibrium as some employers can't keep up with market wages and fall out of the market and supply vs demand stabilizes? And government wages seem like the least relevant - government pay was uncompetitive in so many areas to start with.
This sounds more like well worn ideological talking points, than a real concern.
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/204535/number-of-governm...
Raising the federal pay rate by 5.2% won't make federal employment competitive with private. Maybe it will change the balance for local and state government employment.
[0] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
[1] https://gogovernment.org/all-about-government-jobs/pay-and-t...
[2] https://www.opm.gov/retirement-center/csrs-information/eligi...