![]()
Federal employees should receive the average 1.9 percent pay hike in their next paychecks, NTEU learned during a call with the Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget. Most, but not all, federal employees are scheduled to receive their retroactive pay at the same time as well.
The raise includes 1.4 percent across-the-board, and another 0.5 percent toward locality pay, retroactive to the first pay period of 2019. Securing the raise was a major victory for NTEU and our members because it overturned a pay freeze that had already been enacted. NTEU then urged the administration to quickly implement the pay increase and communicate with the workforce on when they could expect to see it in their paychecks.
Officials told NTEU that federal employees will see their higher pay rates in their next paychecks (on or about April 19) and that roughly 80 percent of the federal workforce would also receive their retroactive pay at the same time. According to OPM, the remaining 20 percent of the workforce reportedly experienced some sort of personnel action since early January, such as a step increase, that requires the retroactive portion of their pay to be computed manually. While OPM has stated that that those calculations would be completed and employees paid by mid-May, NTEU has already learned that at least one federal agency will not meet that timeframe. According to the IRS, it may take up to four months for it to complete the calculations for the more than 24,000 IRS employees with a personnel action.
NTEU continues to closely monitor the implementation of the pay increase and will provide updates as more information is available.
At the same time, NTEU already has our sights on a 2020 federal pay increase. The union is working with allies in Congress to secure a 3.6 percent pay raise for federal employees after the president released his 2020 budget proposal once again freezing federal pay.