WASHINGTON — For federal employees, silence in the budget will prove to be golden.
By taking no position regarding a federal employee raise for 2016, the budget agreement announced Tuesday evening will allow an average 1.3 percent raise for federal employees to take effect by default. That represents the third straight year that Congress has followed such a strategy of action by inaction on the raise.
The increase, to be effective with the first full pay period of the new year — starting Jan. 10 for most workers — will be divided into two parts: A 1 percent increase will be paid across the board, and the money for the additional 0.3 percentage will be allotted in varying amounts according to locality.
In the Washington-Baltimore locality, a sprawling zone that includes the District of Columbia, much of Northern Virginia and Maryland, and parts of eastern West Virginia and south-central Pennsylvania, that will mean a raise of about 1.5 percent.
That is one of 21 metro area zones set to expand by pulling in some outlying counties; in addition 13 new such zones are being created. The result will be additional pay boosts for nearly 110,000 federal workers who are being moved out of the lowest-paid locality, the catchall ''rest of the US'' zone for places outside what will now be 44 city areas.
An executive order to finalize the increases is still ahead.
Although the raise specifically applies only to General Schedule employees — white-collar employees below the executive level — raises for blue-collar employees under the so-called wage-grade system once again will match those paid to GS employees in an area.
The raise will not be paid to political appointees, however, nor to members of Congress. Further, career employees at the senior executive and senior professional levels do not receive raises in tandem with the GS. They are paid within ranges based on performance and other factors.