Pay

Trump finalizes federal pay raise for 2018

President Donald Trump signed off on an average pay increase for federal civilian workers of 1.4 percent and 2.1 percent for uniformed service members.

Jason Miller@jmillerWFED

December 22, 2017 4:56 pm

1 min read

President Donald Trump made the federal pay raise official today.

The president signed a memo authorizing an average raise of 1.4 percent, with an additional 0.5 percent adjusted in locality pay for a total of a 1.9 percent for federal civilian employees, and the 2.4 percent pay raise for uniformed service members.

This annual exercise is the final step to ensure federal employees receive an increase in their annual pay.

Trump also approved the 2018 locality pay rates, which according to a November memo from the Office of Personnel Management continues “locality payments in 2018 for the same governmentwide and single-agency categories of employees who are authorized to receive 2017 locality payments.”

Additionally, the memo grants increases to the Senior Executive Service members, Congress and political appointees.

The pay raise becomes effective on Jan. 1.

The memo comes after the Senate Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee didn’t offer an alternative to the White House’s proposal, which Trump announced at the end of August, when it released its final version of the 2018 appropriations bill in November.

Some members of Congress pushed for to have pay raise parity between civilian and military employees, but that effort didn’t make any real progress.

Last year, President Barack Obama approved a 2.1 percent pay raise for federal civilian agency workers to be on part with the military servicemembers.