Some feds will be happy about the January 2016 expanded pay zones, but for those already in a locality pay area, it might be an unwelcome adjustment. The New Year will ring in with 102,000 white-collar feds transferring from the lower paid rest of U.S. (RUS) into thirteen new or expanded locality pay areas.
Locality pay is compared and set to compete with private sector wages in similar jobs in that area. While pay can vary among the more than thirty-four localities, pay is higher in a locality than in RUS. The new additions to the locality pay areas will benefit from this salary adjustment; however, the additional employees will impact the yearly increases for all of the feds within the locality.
President Obama has suggested a 1 percent locality raise, which will vary from city to city. The small pay raise may get even smaller with the expanded locality areas. When the pie has to be cut into more pieces, each individual piece gets smaller. Federal employees are used to pay freezes or miniscule increases that don’t keep pace with the ever-rising cost of living.
Drawing a Boundary on Locality Pay
Hopefully, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has a plan for when to draw a firm boundary on the size of a locality. The Washington-Baltimore (D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia) locality stretches into West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and now Eastern Shore Maryland. With raises being affected by the number of employees in a locality pay area, OPM will need to put a cap on how big each area can get. It might seem easier to just keep stretching the existing locality areas; however, OPM needs to consider the impacts to current personnel and find ways to efficiently make changes without further discouraging its current workforce.
Feds can always take a second to compare salaries for the same position in other localities. See if your paycheck would go farther in another area.
