September 20, 2016 9:56AM # Growth in Federal Worker Pay Slows By [Chris Edwards](https://www.cato.org/people/chris-edwards) --- SHARE New data on worker pay in the government and private sector has been released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. There is good news: the pace of federal pay increases slowed during 2015, while the pace of private-sector pay increases picked up. After increasing 3.9 percent in 2014, average compensation for federal government civilian workers increased 1.9 percent in 2015. Meanwhile, average private-sector compensation increased 1.4 percent in 2014, but then sped up to a 3.8 percent increase in 2015. Private workers thus closed the pay gap a little with federal workers in 2015, but there is a lot of catch up to do. In 2015 federal workers had average compensation (wages plus benefits) of $123,160, which was 76 percent higher than the private-sector average of $69,901. [This essay](http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/federal-worker-pay) examines the data in more detail. Average federal compensation grew much faster than average private-sector compensation during the 1990s and 2000s. But the figure shows that federal increases have roughly equaled private-sector increases since 2010. President Obama modestly reined in federal pay increases after the spendthrift Bush years. Will the next president continue the restraint? ![Media Name: gov_workers.png](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/gov_workers.png?itok=FkbSMH9C) For background on federal pay issues and the BEA data, [see here](http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/federal-worker-pay). ##### Related Tags [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).