A Multi-Year Pay Freeze Continues
According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), a pay freeze will continue to remain in effect for some senior political officials in the federal government.
The pay freeze impacts some senior political officials (including the vice president and other Executive Schedule appointees). It was first established in law with the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014. It took effect on the first day of the first pay period after January 17, 2014. It has been extended annually through appropriations legislation.
This means the pay cap for those covered has been in place for more than 12 years.
To put this into perspective, the pay freeze isn’t short-term or a new policy or practice. It is a longstanding, decade-plus policy enacted in 2014 and repeatedly continued by Congress.
The OPM announcement states that pay rates will remain capped for certain Executive Schedule employees. Political appointees in Schedules C and G are exempted from the pay freeze.
Who is Covered by the Pay Freeze?
The pay freeze generally covers the following senior political appointees:
- An employee serving in an Executive Schedule (EX) position, or in a position for
where the rate of pay is fixed by statute at an EX rate, and who holds a position
under a political appointment; - A chief of mission or ambassador at large;
- A noncareer appointee in the Senior Executive Service (SES) paid at or above the
official rate for EX-IV ($197,200 in 2026); - A limited-term appointee or a limited-emergency appointee in the SES serving
under a political appointment and paid at or above the official rate for EX-IV; and - Any other type of employee paid at or above the official rate for EX-IV who serves
under a political appointment.
The payable rates for freeze-covered Executive Schedule individuals (or an employee paid at an EX rate under law) during calendar year 2026 are shown in the table. These are roughly the 2013/2014 values carried forward with minimal inflation indexing. Note: The frozen rates were put into effect in January 2019 by increasing the 2013 EX rates by 1.9 percent, rounded to the nearest $100.
| Executive Schedule (EX) Level | Payable Annual Rates in 2026 | Official EX Pay Rates in 2014 |
| EX-I | $203,500.00 | $201,700 |
| EX-II | $183,100.00 | $181,500 |
| EX-III | $168,400.00 | $167,000 |
| EX-IV | $158,500.00 | $157,100 |
| EX-V | $148,500.00 | $147.200 |
Impact of the Pay Freeze
The pay freeze limits the payable salary for covered senior political officials even when the official statutory (“Executive Schedule”) rate goes up. Essentially, covered officials are paid at older, frozen levels rather than the current rate established by law.
For 2026, the cap on what covered officials can receive is about $197,000, even though the official Executive Schedule rates are higher.
Because the freeze spans more than a decade, senior officials paid at or above these caps have not received standard pay increases that otherwise might have occurred over that period.
Official Executive Schedule rates have increased roughly 27% overall from 2013 levels through 2026 (based on annual General Schedule base pay adjustments applied under 5 U.S.C. 5318), while payable rates for covered officials have only received a one-time 1.9% adjustment in 2019 and have remained static since that time.
The impact of the freeze across all affected positions (accounting for varying levels and turnover) over this multi-year period suggests a collective impact of reduced compensation for officials in the low hundreds of millions of dollars, representing a substantial savings to the government but also creating retention challenges and difficulty being able to hire the best qualified people for high-level public service roles.
In 2023, Jason Briefel, then the director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executives Association, said, “The political appointee pay freeze is bad policy that has long outlived its potential initial justification, now being in place for nearly a decade. It is far past time for Congress to allow this provision to lapse.”
Impact of Pay Compression on Other Federal Employees
The Executive Schedule pay cap directly affects senior General Schedule (GS) employees because, by law, GS pay cannot exceed Executive Schedule Level IV.
Under 5 U.S.C. § 5304(g)(1), GS employees are subject to a statutory maximum payable rate equal to Level IV of the Executive Schedule.
As of 2026, the official Level IV pay rate is $197,200.
In high-locality pay areas (e.g., Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and New York), the calculated GS-15 step 7–10 locality rates would exceed Level IV. That does not happen because these employees cannot legally be paid above that level.
The impact of this pay compression is:
- The employee’s pay is capped at Level IV
- These employees do not receive the full locality-adjusted rate
- Raises are effectively frozen once they hit the ceiling
This creates pay compression where:
- A GS-15 Step 10 earns the same as (or nearly the same as)
- A GS-15 Step 7–9
- And in some cases, only slightly less than
- Their supervisors in the Senior Executive Service (SES)
Overall Impact of Pay Compression
The Executive Schedule pay cap has a ripple effect. It directly affects a number of senior political employees, as well as a large number of senior employees under the General Schedule. This is how it impacts employees under the GS system.
Pay compression:
- Directly compresses pay for senior GS employees in some localities
- Limits locality adjustments in high-cost areas
- Flattens top-step pay
- Contributes to long-running structural pay compression at the top of the federal civil service
While difficult to measure, the impact of this system is likely leading people to move into top-level federal jobs that they would not have normally received. Pay compression can result in someone taking a job with more responsibility, knowing the pay level will not change. In effect, some of the highest-performing employees or highest-potential recruits may decline to accept a more senior position due to pay compression.
