Biden to Tie Manager Pay to Spending at Black-Owned Businesses

Growing the share of federal dollars spent at small businesses owned by Black and Latino Americans will be considered when deciding pay next year for senior federal procurement managers, the White House budget office said Thursday.

The new performance metric is part of a broader plan to increase opportunities for companies owned by female, veteran, Black, or Latino Americans. The budget office directed agencies to lay out the details for employees by Jan. 10.

Helping small businesses compete for federal contracting dollars has long been considered for determining pay for procurement officials, though that metric hasn’t always focused on businesses owned by disadvantaged Americans, the White House said.

The initiative also directs agencies to raise their goal for the share of contracting dollars awarded to those businesses to 11%, up from an average of 9.8% over the past five years.

Federal spending on contracts reached a record high of $686 billion in fiscal year 2020, up 14% from the previous year due to Covid-19, according to Bloomberg Government’s federal contracting data.

Defense contractor giants Lockheed Martin Corp., Raytheon Technologies Corp., and General Dynamics Corp. received a combined $129.5 billion of that spending.