Federal workers get zero, federal cops get 3.8%

Fascist in Chief Donald Trump has formally proposed a complete pay freeze for most federal workers. Under Trump’s proposal, the vast majority of the federal workforce would be paid at the same rate in 2027 as they were in 2026. The pay freeze comes even as the U.S. faces its highest inflation rates in three years. In May of 2026, inflation hit 4.2%, a level it had not reached since April 2023. It stood at 3.4% in July.

That inflation has a source. Energy prices were up 14.7% over the year in July, with gasoline up 24.6%. The energy index sat at 0.5% in February 2026. It jumped to 12.5% in March, the month after Washington opened its war on Iran on Feb. 28, and peaked at 23.5% in May. Core inflation, stripping out food and energy, was 2.5% and falling. The war sharply raised energy costs and drove the new surge in inflation that federal workers are now told to absorb.

So, while workers struggle to put food on the table and to pay a myriad of bills, the racist demagogue Donald Trump has decided that about 2 million federal workers don’t need a pay raise. Meanwhile, Trump’s personal wealth nearly doubled in his first year back in office, from $3.9 billion to $7.3 billion. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer indeed. 

However, there is one key exception to Trump’s federal pay freeze. All federal law enforcement officers will receive an almost 4% raise. This is the same raise as they received last year. Murdering Renée Nicole Good, Keith Porter Jr., and Alex Pretti seems to have served federal law enforcement well. This consecutive raise for federal cops should be viewed as nothing less than blood money, while the rest of the federal workforce faces pay freezes, layoffs, and the slashing of union rights. 

The message here is pretty clear. The same capitalist state forcing workers to absorb the costs of war and inflation is rewarding and strengthening the federal cops who enforce its rule at home. A decaying U.S. capitalism needs war abroad, and police terror at home, and driving wages backward is part of the same process. If anything, this reality should only strengthen the argument for the need for socialism. Reality for workers and oppressed people isn’t going to improve as capitalism continues to decay, requiring drastic cuts of social programs and wages on behalf of the wealthiest 1%. Even if a Democrat wins in 2028, the masses of working-class people in this country will still face wage stagnation and racist police terror. 

Even while Trump, Hegseth, Musk, and similar others justify the pay freeze as “fiscal responsibility,” corporate profits skyrocket. In the second quarter of 2026, U.S. corporate profitability reached an all-time record, with after-tax profits rising 8.2% to an annual rate of $3.92 trillion.

Workers were moving in the opposite direction. Real hourly compensation in the nonfarm business sector fell at a 3.1% annual rate in the second quarter and was down 0.1% from a year earlier.

Profits may be surging, but labor’s share is falling. In the nonfarm business sector, wages, benefits and other compensation paid to workers fell to 52.9% of output in the second quarter of 2026, the lowest since the government began tracking the series in 1947. When the series began, labor’s share stood at 65.8%.

The fact is, even if labor’s share of output were 70%, capitalism would still be based on exploitation. Under capitalism, the surplus produced by workers is appropriated by the capitalist class. Under socialism, that surplus would be socially controlled and used to meet human needs instead of enriching a small class of billionaires and millionaires.

Trump’s federal pay freeze has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility or cutting the deficit. The war budget grows no matter who is in office, because a declining monopoly capitalism cannot do without it. The ruling class tries to push workers’ wages and living standards down so that workers bear more of the costs of capitalist crisis, war and the capitalist state.

Freezing federal workers’ pay is another part of a broader ruling-class offensive to cut workers’ living standards while directing more of society’s wealth toward profits, war and the capitalist class. No reform to the U.S. government will alleviate this phenomenon. The only way to ensure that all workers and oppressed people receive what they need to live is to smash the capitalist state and build a socialist one.