Transportation Security Administration officers at airports nationwide are getting an unprecedented 30% pay raise, the largest bump the federal agency has ever seen.
"It was unfair and frankly unconscionable that the more than 63,000 of these outstanding TSA public servants carried out their duties for more than 20 years while being paid less than their government counterparts," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday during a press conference at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in northern Virginia.
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More than 63,000 TSA employees, including the 50,000 transportation officers who work at security checkpoints, saw the pay increase hit paychecks over the weekend. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) joined DHS and TSA union officials to announce the pay bump Thursday morning.
The significant boost in compensation came after 15 years of Thompson pushing his colleagues during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations to close the pay disparity between TSA workers, who are not law enforcement, and law enforcement agents and officers in other DHS agencies.
Mayorkas called Thompson the "single greatest champion of this right."
TSA Administrator David Pekoske, who has been serving since early on in the Trump administration, described it as a "sweet moment" to get to celebrate the raise, and said it was already having a major positive impact on attrition and recruitment.
"This is the largest federal pay bump in at least 30 years and probably ever," Thompson said. "This will impact everyone at TSA, including the agency's 50,000 transportation officers who work to keep our skies secure around the clock."
The pay raises were funded through $398 million included in the fiscal 2023 omnibus bill that passed last December. However, House appropriators could walk back that extra funding in the 2024 budget. Appropriators proposed continuing the pay raises for roughly 50,000 security checkpoint officers, but not the 13,000 other TSA employees who work in administrative roles, as canine handlers, and behavioral experts.
Pekoske said news of the raises was already having a profound impact on employee morale, particularly at a time in the year when TSA processes more airline passengers than any other time of the year.
"If you think of what's happening right now in the United States with the recovery from the pandemic and the increase in air travel, we would not have been able to be as successful as we have been this summer with record volumes of passenger travel through this airport, through [Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI)], through [Dulles International Airport,] through airports across the country were it not for this pay increase," Pekoske said.
Already, the TSA has seen a 30% increase in the number of applicants for open positions, which Peksoske dubbed a "huge" win.
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The agency is also losing fewer employees. Since the start of the fiscal year in October 2022, TSA's attrition rate has declined 61% as Congress moved closer to passing the historic raise.
"What that means is we retain talent, we don't have to recruit and retrain and spend the funds to do that," said Pekoske, who called on Congress to continue the boost in funding for employees in the next year.