Trump likely to propose pay freeze for federal workers in 2026
President Trump appears set to propose freeze civilian federal employees’ pay next year, according to draft budget documents.
The news came in the form of a passback, which is effectively the Office of Management and Budget’s response to agencies’ individual budget submissions. A report by the Congressional Research Service says agencies can appeal certain programmatic decisions to OMB, the documents are, for all intents and purposes, the office’s final decision.
A copy of one agency’s passback, obtained by Government Executive, said the document’s funding levels “reflect a pay freeze for civilian employees in calendar year 2026.”
If enacted, it would mark the first year that federal workers have not received a pay increase since 2013, the last of three years of pay freezes amid sequestration. President Trump previously proposed pay freezes in the first three of his annual budget submissions, but Congress ultimately overruled him each time, with raises in the range of 1.4% to 2.6%.
In 2020, he proposed a 1% across-the-board pay increase for feds as part of his budgetary request, but reneged on that pledge and supported efforts to freeze their pay later in funding negotiations. Congress ultimately adopted the 1% increase that year.
The Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a request for comment.
Since taking office again in January, the Trump administration has had the federal workforce in its crosshairs, encouraging and at times cajoling employees to leave government through Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments and multiple rounds of the deferred resignation program. It also engineered the legally dubious mass firing of tens of thousands of workers who had recently been hired, promoted or transferred between agencies and is preparing reductions in force across the government.
And last month, Trump signed an executive order stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of the right to collectively bargain and this week ceased deducting employees’ union dues from their paychecks.
In a statement Friday, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who each year introduces legislation seeking to increase federal salaries, condemned Trump’s decision.
“Donald Trump has launched a cruel, unprecedented assault on the federal workforce and the critical services it provides to the American people,” he said. “He has carried out unlawful mass firings, purged the government of experts, peddled unsanctioned and untrustworthy resignation offers, and subjected employees to unAmerican 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.”
