Feds are still slated for a 2% average pay raise in 2025 per House appropriations bill

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.