Trump Decision on Federal Pay Awaited as Dec. 31 Deadline Looms

President Donald Trump needs to decide soon on what kind of pay increase federal employees should get in January.

That’s because of a looming Dec. 31 deadline for issuing an executive order setting federal pay for the upcoming calendar year.

If the president doesn’t issue the executive order and Congress also doesn’t act on federal pay, much larger increases will take effect in 2019 under the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act, a 1990 law that was intended to close the gap between federal and private sector pay. More specifically, federal workers would receive an automatic across-the-board pay increase of 2.1 ...