According to recent draft budget documents, President Trump appears set to freeze the pay of civilian federal workers in 2026. The news came from a passback, essentially the Office of Management and Budget’s response to individual budget submissions from agencies. A copy of one agency’s passback says the document’s funding levels “reflect a pay freeze for civilian employees in calendar year 2026.”
If enacted, this would mark the first year since 2013, the last of three years of pay freezes due to sequestration, that federal workers have not received a pay increase. President Trump previously proposed similar pay freezes in his 2017-2019 annual budget submissions, however, all three were overruled by Congress, with raises from 1.4-2.6% being given instead. He suggested a 1% pay increase across the board in 2020; however, he later went back on that and supported efforts to freeze the pay. Congress adopted the 1% increase that year.
Since January, the Trump Administration has heavily targeted the federal workforce, encouraging employees to leave via Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments, and multiple rounds of the deferred resignation program. It also put into motion the legally questionable mass firing of tens of thousands of workers who had been hired, transferred, or promoted recently. Additionally, just last month, the president signed an executive order that stripped 2/3 of the federal workforce of their right to collectively bargain, and just this week, stopped deducting union dues from paychecks.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-VA., who every year introduces legislation with the goal of increasing federal salaries, condemned Trump in a statement the same day the news broke: “Donald Trump has launched a cruel, unprecedented assault on the federal workforce and the critical services it provides to the American people. He has carried out unlawful mass firings, purged the government of experts, peddled unsanctioned and untrustworthy resignation offers, and subjected employees to un-American loyalty tests. A pay freeze is the latest in a long line of insults he has lobbed at the federal workers who keep this country up and running. Civil servants are among our nation’s greatest assets. They deserve the fair compensation they have earned.”
