Answers to Questions About Something on Many People's Minds
President Clinton issued an order in late November setting the January 2001 federal raise at 3.7 percent, on average. But saying that white-collar federal employees will receive an average raise of a certain amount tells only part of the story, and numerous employees have asked for a primer on pay.</br></br>A: There are two components to General Schedule raises--the across- the-board part and the portion divided up as locality pay. For 2001, 2.7 percentage points of the raise will go to the former and 1 percentage point to the latter.</br></br>The government divides the funds available for locality pay among 32 designated localities based on how they rank in terms of pay gaps with local private-sector salaries. The calculation produced a 3.81 percent raise for the Washington-Baltimore locality for 2001.</br></br>Although many Washington area employees believe the region gets (or should get) one of the biggest portions of the annual locality payout, it actually ranks in the middle of the pack among localities. Employees in the San Francisco area get the most. For example, the annual salary this year for a GS-15, step 1, is $89,264 in San Francisco, compared with $84,638 in Washington and $82,876 in the lowest-paid locality designation, the catchall "rest of the United States," for employees outside the selected metropolitan areas.</br></br>The distribution of locality pay is based on local wage markets, not on local living costs. There has been substantial controversy over the years about the methods used to calculate pay gaps and about whether a pay gap with the private sector even exists.