Feds are still slated for a 2% average pay raise in 2025 per House appropriations bill
President Biden proposed a 2% average pay raise for the federal workforce in 2025. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
By
Erich Wagner
The House Appropriations Committee advanced legislation Thursday that failed to override President Biden’s 2025 pay plan.
Civilian federal employees are still expected to receive an average 2.0% raise next year, after the House Appropriations Committee advanced a spending package Thursday that is silent of federal worker compensation.
Last spring, President Biden turned heads by releasing a fiscal 2025 budget proposal with a 2.0% average pay increase for civilian federal employees in 2025. That figure came in well below Biden’s previous pay raise plans—in 2024, federal workers saw an average 5.2% increase; in 2023, the increase was 4.6%; and in 2022, 2.2%.
Biden’s proposal not only fell short of his previous pay raises; it also abandoned the concept of pay parity between the military and civilian federal workforces. Biden’s budget calls for a 4.5% pay increase for military service members next year.
During a congressional hearing last month, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., an annual sponsor of the Federal Adjustment of Income Rates, which this year would increase federal employee pay by 7.4% on average, said his staff was unable to reverse engineer Biden’s 2% proposal using available data.
“I guess; when we looked at our analytics, there’s no way we could have gotten to 2%, and I hope we have an opportunity to dialogue about that,” Connolly told Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Jason Miller. “But I think that’s just a very inadequate number for hardworking federal employees.”
The traditional method by which Congress may override a president’s federal employee pay plan is through inserting language into the annual Financial Services and General Government appropriations package. The House Appropriations Committee on Thursday advanced that measure by a 33-24 vote without including the requisite language to impose a different pay raise for next year.
In prior years, Connolly has introduced amendments calling for a larger pay increase for federal workers when the spending package reached the floor. But the chances of Republicans, who control the chamber, endorsing such a provision, seem low.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has yet to reveal its own spending bills for fiscal 2025.