President’s Budget Calls for Pay Raise, Workforce Investment

The White House released President Joe Biden’s full fiscal year 2022 budget on Friday. The budget proposal includes a pay raise for federal employees and pledges to focus on strengthening the workforce.

The president’s budget calls for a 2.7 percent pay raise for civilian federal employees, equal to the proposed increase for military service members.

“The Budget would help bolster the Administration’s efforts to: center equity across the Federal Government; empower, rebuild, and protect the Federal workforce; restore public trust in the Federal Government; deliver services effectively and efficiently; enhance Federal information technology (IT) and cybersecurity; advance America’s clean energy future; and help ensure the future is made in America by all of America’s workers,” the budget proposal states. “Taken together, these actions will support the President’s Management Agenda as it takes shape in the coming months.”

The budget chapter on the federal workforce outlines several initiatives of the Biden-Harris administration that focus on the federal workforce.

Restoring federal internship programs and “reinvigorating” the Pathways Program for student trainees and recent graduates by issuing additional Pathways regulations are among the initiatives included in the budget.  Federal agencies are bringing on only 4,000 paid interns per year, down from 60,000 per year a decade ago, with the budget directing agencies to assess their practices and ensure internships are included in workforce plans. 

Additional “major workforce reforms” are being developed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council, according to the budget proposal. One such area is focused on enabling a talent surge, which would include enabling agencies to rehire former employees at higher grade levels.

The budget proposal directs CHCO Act agencies to “create and fund talent teams at the component level and to participate in or contribute to, as allowable, a centralized, Government-wide hiring assessment support team to improve hiring outcomes for critical positions, including more technical or hard-to-fill positions, in particular.”