Trump Hikes Federal Workers' Pay All the Way up to $170,000 Per Year
One of the more disappointing aspects of the Trump era thus far has been the inability of the administration to get a hold on the size of the federal government. This isn’t just in terms of the money spent, mind you, but also the number of employees.
The number of federal employees — 2.1 million — hasn’t changed significantly since Trump took office. In fact, it’s grown slightly, according to the Congressional Research Service.
If Trump wanted to slash the size of government, particularly given the headwinds of doing so considering the Democrats now control the House of Representatives, the best way to do it would be to hope for attrition. If it’s impossible to fire or slash government workers or departments, it would help to make the government a little less attractive to work for.
Yet, thanks to an executive order signed by Trump on Friday, working for the federal government will be even more lucrative and attractive — to the tune of up to $170,000 a year.
According to The Hill, the executive order follows a bill the president signed last week which would give federal workers a base 2.6 percent raise, the largest in a decade.
A government shutdown and the biggest raise in a decade: How Trump gave federal workers whiplash in 2019 https://t.co/itO4LD7cF2
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 28, 2019
In a number of city zones where Bureau of Labor Statistics information shows there’s a disparity between public-sector and private-sector salaries, that raise would be even higher.
Unsurprisingly, the Washington-Baltimore area will get the biggest raise, with 3.5 percent.
“The San Francisco and Seattle areas will receive the next-largest boost, 3.4 percent each, with the San Diego, Los Angeles and New York areas getting between 3.3 percent and 3.4 percent raises,” The Washington Post reported.
“The smallest raise, 2.85 percent, will be paid in the catchall locality, called the ‘rest of the U.S.’”
The raises will be applicable to those under the General Schedule, the pay scale which encompasses most white-collar employees of the federal government who aren’t at the executive level.
The cap under the General Schedule will be $170,800 when the new pay schedule takes effect on Jan. 5.
The thing is that Trump had originally backed no raise for federal workers earlier in the year.
After supporting the wage freeze, which was the sensible thing to do, Trump went before Congress in late August and proposed a 2.6 percent raise with no variations by locale.
Eventually, as part of the budget deal, the president and his allies negotiated a compromise which called for an average 3.1 percent raise with variations by region.
But at least we avoided another shutdown, right, folks?
I’m going to go into full George H.W. Bush mode here: Read my lips, no new spending bills just to keep the government open.
The president had the right idea in the first place. Attrition and budgetary restraint are both good things, especially if you want to reduce the size of a metastasizing federal government in which agencies grow upon agencies.
The reason you raise wages, of course, is if you’re filling new jobs. Let’s hope that they’re not. We can’t afford the bureaucracy that we’ve got.
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