Biden’s Major Change To U.S. Salaries

Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

(FixThisNation.com) – The Biden administration is planning to release a proposal that would prohibit the salary history from being considered during the hiring of a federal employee.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is set to announce the new regulations later Wednesday, noting that federal agencies would be prohibited from taking into account an applicant’s nonfederal salary history when deciding on the pay for new federal employees. This regulation is part of the administration’s efforts to promote pay equity and to act as a model employer for the entire country.

OPM Director Kiran Ahuja in her statement noted that the salary history of a candidate could have a disproportionate effect on “women and members of other underserved communities.” She further added that the federal government with these regulations would try to promote a way of doing business across the nation that was more equal and fairer.

Currently, twenty-one states have laws or executive orders that restrict employers from using salary history when deciding an employee’s wages, with some states having fully prohibited the practice. According to the Department of Labor, in places where salary history bans are in place, minority workers who changed positions had a 7.9 percent wage increase.

President Biden’s fiscal 2024 budget proposal, announced in May, also included a 5.2 average pay increase for federal employees and military personnel. This increase would be an additional increase on top of the 4.6 percent pay increase that federal employees had this year.

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