President Joe Biden has finalized a 2% federal pay raise for the General Schedule, but the increases federal employees across the country will see when they open their first paycheck of 2025 will look a little different.

That’s because the 2% federal pay raise is an average — it will vary slightly depending on where federal employees work and their locality pay area.

Biden’s 2% raise includes a 1.7% across-the-board boost that most civilian employees on the General Schedule will get, as well as an average of a 0.3% locality pay adjustment. The 0.3% portion of the raise accounts for the variations in next year’s federal pay raise. Starting in January, some feds’ raises will be slightly above the 2% average raise, while others will see slightly less than the average.

For 2025, the spread of raises ranges from a high of 2.35% in the San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland locality pay area, and a low of 1.88% in the Cleveland locality pay area, according to the General Schedule pay tables the Office of Personnel Management published Monday afternoon. Federal employees working in the national capital region will get a 2.22% raise next year.

Based on OPM’s data, Federal News Network has compiled a chart of the actual raises General Schedule employees in each locality pay area will receive.

The variations in the federal pay raise are due to locality pay, which dates back to 1990 as part of the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA). The law attempted to correct what Congress at the time observed to be a growing wage gap between the federal and private sectors.

Although FEPCA allows for a large enough annual federal pay raise to bring the federal-private sector wage gap down to 5%, no president since 1994 has incorporated the fully authorized amount. Decades of deviating from FEPCA have caused distortion of federal pay in multiple ways.

The 2025 federal pay raise will take effect in the first full pay period in January.

Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu contributed to this report.

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