Federal Times: “Federal employees on average see a 31.86 percent difference between their paychecks and those doing the same work in the private sector, according to an April 10, 2018, report submitted to the Federal Salary Council by its Locality Pay Working Group. The working group calculates the pay gap between federal employees and their private-sector counterparts by taking sample data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Compensation Survey in areas of the country in which federal employees receive locality pay and averaging those pay rates into a format that is comparable with federal general schedule rates. Federal employees can receive locality pay on top of what the general schedule rates allow for their position if the government has determined that the cost of living in that locality is higher than the rest of the U.S…”