The Federal Salary Council, a group of union representatives and outside experts on compensation that oversees the General Schedule, recently announced that federal workers earn an average 34.07% less than their private sector counterparts, reports FedAgent.

"Federal pay needs to be substantially increased," said National Treasury Employees Union president Tony Reardon, a member of the council. "When you look at the private sector, what kind of pay increases they have had, it dwarfs what federal employees have received. It's time for Congress to step up and pay federal employees what they deserve to be paid."

The Council used Department of Labor surveys to derive this figure, comparing the salary data of 250 various federal occupations with equivalent rates in local labor markets. However, other comparisons that use different data and methods have come to different conclusions, and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has stated that no one approach to assessing pay is definitive.

Federal employees are currently set to receive a 1.6 percent in January, which some have argued isn't sufficient.