Annual Adjustments--The Key to Federal Executive Pay

Top federal executives paid under the Executive Schedule (ES) are supposed to receive the annual comparability salary adjustments given to General Schedule (GS) exployees, but these executives have been denied all but one such adjustment. Quadrennial assessment and adjustment of executive salaries have been denied. This has been partially due to a linkage between congressional and executive level II salaries. ES salaries have increased an average of only 28 percent since 1969, as compared with increases of 87 percent in GS, and even higher for some top positions in the private sector. Salaries for federal executives are much lower than those received by many executives in private industry, large labor unions, government-related organizations, and educational institutions.