Obama nudges locality pay for federal workers

Federal workers aren’t getting much of a pay increase next year, but those in Alaska will get a small extra bump.

President Obama today announced changes to the locality pay for civilian employees, intended to account for differences in living costs.

Alaska’s locality pay will increase 0.47 of a percentage point, to just over 25 percent, in 2016. That comes in addition to the increase in federal base pay, which for the third year in a row will be 1 percent.

Alaska’s locality pay is nearly equal to that of Boston and Chicago, but substantially less than New York City’s 29.2 percent. The highest in the country is the San Francisco area at 35.75 percent.

Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.

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