A federal advisory group reported Tuesday that federal workers have fallen slightly further behind the private sector in pay, a trend that union leaders said they hope will be stopped by getting the government back in the habit of paying annual raises.

The Federal Salary Council, a group of union officials and pay policy experts, said that the average “pay gap” in favor of the private sector now stands at 35.4 percent, up from 34.6 percent last year and 26.3 percent in 2011.

The pay gap figure, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, involves employees paid under the largest of the government’s many pay systems, the General Schedule for white-collar employees below the executive level. Pay rates under the GS system are locality-based, varying among 31 metropolitan areas, the entirety of both Alaska and Hawaii, and a catchall “rest of the U.S.” locality for everywhere else apart from foreign countries. Continue reading “Federal workers falling further behind in pay, council finds”