Civilian federal employees are headed for a pay freeze in January 2027, and it takes hold automatically if Congress does not set a different figure. In an Aug. 26, 2026 letter to Congress, President Donald Trump wrote that “base pay and locality pay for civilian Federal employees will not change from the 2026 rates.” The same letter directs a 3.8 percent increase in 2027 compensation for law enforcement personnel.
For anyone on the General Schedule, the practical question is what a second flat year means for the paycheck that starts in January and what to line up before then. Base pay and locality pay both stay at their 2026 rates under the plan, with no across-the-board raise and no locality raise, unless lawmakers enact another number. Federal workers within sight of retirement also have to rethink the tax and withdrawal plan they built around an expected raise.
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What the president’s letter sets for 2027
The letter is an alternative pay plan, the mechanism federal law gives a president to replace the automatic January adjustment. It cites 5 U.S.C. 5303(b) and 5304a, the sections that govern that process. Trump wrote: “I have therefore decided to set at zero the pay adjustment to be made for the 2027 pay year.”
The document was referred to Congress on Aug. 27, 2026 and printed as House Document 119-189. The pay year is 2027, and the rates stay where they were in 2026 from the first January paycheck.
What the automatic raise would have been
The letter spells out what the freeze replaces. Without it, the base General Schedule would have received “an additional 3.1 percent across-the-board increase,” and locality pay for the civilian workforce “would automatically increase by an average of 20.6 percent.”
The 20.6 percent is an average across locality areas, not a rate every worker would have seen. The letter says the automatic raise would have cost the government $26 billion in the first year alone, and it cites that cost in setting the adjustment at zero.
Who gets the 3.8 percent?
Under the letter, “at my direction the Office of Personnel Management shall use its statutory authority to increase 2027 compensation for law enforcement personnel by 3.8 percent.” That is the only group the letter singles out for an increase.
The letter does not list which job series or agencies count as law enforcement personnel. Employees outside that group fall under the zero adjustment for civilian workers. Until OPM publishes how it applies the 3.8 percent, the open detail is exactly who is on each side of that line.
Will Congress change it?
The plan stands unless Congress enacts a different figure by the end of the year. FEDweek reported on Sept. 2 that Trump reasserted the 2027 pay freeze for federal employees except law enforcement personnel, and that there was no sign Congress would act to override it.
That makes the posture plain: the freeze is a proposal that becomes the pay rate by default, not a law that has been passed on its own. A bill setting a raise would have to clear Congress before the 2027 pay year begins to change the January figures.
What stays open for federal workers in 2027?
Everything in the letter rests on a single sentence: base and locality pay “will not change from the 2026 rates.” The numbers around it, 3.1 percent, 20.6 percent on average and $26 billion, describe the raise the government says it is declining to pay.
What the letter cannot settle is whether lawmakers step in before the year ends. For a worker deciding about overtime, a retirement date or a withdrawal plan, the working assumption is a January paycheck identical to December’s, with any change depending on Congress.
Planning around a flat 2027 federal paycheck?
A frozen salary means no raise to absorb a higher tax bill, a Medicare surcharge or the first withdrawals from a retirement account. Federal workers close to retirement are the ones most likely to be deciding when to start drawing money and from which account while pay stays flat.
The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner covers the senior deduction, the account withdrawal order and four calculators for provisional income, IRMAA tier, RMD schedule and Roth bracket fill. It does not cover federal pay rules; it works through the tax side of a retirement plan built on a paycheck that is not growing.
Get the withdrawal-order planner for a federal paycheck frozen through 2027 →
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
