Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990

In response to the growing need for pay reform in the Federal Government, Congress enacted the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 (FEPCA). FEPCA provides guidelines to achieve pay comparability between Federal and non Federal jobs. The most far reaching provisions of the Act were to change the way pay is set for General Schedule (GS) and to maintain comparability by locality. It also calls for establishment of the following special pay plans: Senior Level (SL) employees (non-supervisory and non-managerial employees classified above grade 15 of the General Schedule), administrative law judges (AL), members of the Boards of Contract Appeals (CA), certain law enforcement officers, employees in the Senior Biomedical Service, and police of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the United States Mint. FEPCA also authorizes recruitment and relocation bonuses and retention allowances in special situations as well. A major feature of the Act, locality pay, is discussed below.

Locality Pay

FEPCA provides for a two-part annual pay adjustment for General Schedule workers: an across-the-board pay adjustment and a locality pay adjustment that varies by pay locality. Locality pay may be extended to other plans. See page 57 for more information regarding locality pay extensions. Employees receiving special rates for hard-to-fill positions receive the higher of their special salary rate or locality pay.

For 2004, the nationwide adjustment was 2.7 percent. Locality adjustments were granted in 31 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) and the "Rest of U.S." pay area, which includes employees in the 48 contiguous states not covered in one of the other 31 specified locality pay areas.

Table 17 shows that the locality rates ranged from 10.60 percent to 24.21 percent; on the average, locality rates increased by 1.69 percentage points in 2004 to 13.81 percent.

In 2004, the locality pay rate in the Boston locality pay area exceeded the 16 percent special geographic pay adjustment that had been in effect for the law enforcement officers (LEO) and the LEO adjustment was discontinued.

See Table 17 for employment, 2004 local comparability rate and the average annual salary for each designated locality pay area (which in some cases differ from metropolitan statistical areas shown in other Tables).

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