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 compa-rability 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 (nonsupervisory and nonmanagerial 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 2003, the nationwide adjustment was 3.1 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 9.62 percent to 21.08 percent. On the average, locality rates increased by 1.20 percentage points in 2003 to 12.14 percent.

Special geographic pay adjustments are authorized for law enforcement officers (LEOs) employed in one MSA (Boston). LEOs receive the higher of (1) any applicable special salary rate, (2) any applicable special pay adjustment, or (3) their locality pay rate. In 2003, across the board annual adjustments for both the General Schedule and the LEO statutory special rates was 3.10%.

See Table 17 for employment, 2003 comparability (locality) adjustment, 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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