The General Schedule pay system designed for federal employees seems to be crumbling. Some federal agencies are offering a better salary to the workers while compared to others. Though the reason for the gap is the specialist roles played by the federal workers in some cases, but in many of the cases, federal workers doing the same job in two different agencies have a wide salary gap.
GS Pay System and Federal Employees’ Salaries
It is a fact that some federal agencies are paying the federal employees outside the traditional General Schedule (GS) pay system. This new trend has increased the gap between the salaries of the federal workforce of different agencies exponentially.
The Factors
There are many factors that have ensured that there is a gap between federal workers’ salaries. One such factor is the fact that some non-traditional agencies often have to take over regulatory work in high paying industry like financial services. So the employees doing the special regulatory work get paid more than the traditional GS system. The second factor is that some agencies are paying a higher average salary to its employees and the amount is beyond what is allowed by the GS system.
Some agencies that are offering higher salaries have also got a workforce with special skills and they have a special legislative authority that provides a different pay system.
The Pay Freeze
It is also a fact that the average salaries of most of the feds grew slowly due to the pay freeze that lasted for several years. But still, the salaries of employees in some agencies grew at a better rate when compared to the others.
The Best Example
It has also been highlighted that two federal workers in the same position may get different salaries even if the scope of the job is the same. The best example that proves it is given over here. Suppose that you need to work as a human resource personnel in a government agency. In such a case, you will be smart to apply for the position at Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rather than applying for the position at the Forest Service which comes under the Department of Agriculture.
At the Forest Service, you will make about $177,000 a year while at the Securities and Exchange Commission, you will make much more. There are 464 federal employees working in the human resource department at the Forest Service and only 24 percent of them more than $100,000 per year. In contrast, at SEC only 56 people work in the human resource management department and 82 percent of them get over $100,000 per year. Three of them even get over $200,000 a year.
