Florida’s 2023 state employee raises came through the 2023-2024 General Appropriations Act (SB 2500), which gave every state worker a 5% across-the-board salary increase and layered additional raises on top for correctional officers, law enforcement, prosecutors, public defenders, state trades workers, and other hard-to-fill positions.1Florida Senate. General Appropriations Act – 2023 Bill Summaries It was the third year in a row the legislature funded raises for the state workforce.
The 5% Floor and Who Got More
The 5% increase applied to all state employees as a baseline. The budget then added targeted money for groups the state was losing fastest:1Florida Senate. General Appropriations Act – 2023 Bill Summaries
- Correctional officers saw starting salary raised to $45,760, roughly $22 per hour, with bonuses at facilities carrying the highest vacancy rates.
- Corrections educational and maintenance staff received increases above the 5% floor.
- Assistant state attorneys and public defenders got separate pay bumps aimed at longstanding recruitment problems in the court system.
- State-employed trades workers, including plumbers and certain electricians, received a 10% increase.
- Individual agencies received discretionary funding to design their own raises targeting salary compression, recruitment, and retention problems specific to their workforce.
The agency-discretion piece mattered because it let department heads direct extra dollars where vacancies were worst instead of spreading every dollar evenly. An agency losing nurses, for example, could concentrate funding there without waiting for separate legislation.
It Was the Budget, Not a Standalone Bill
If you’ve seen HB 7053 cited as the source of the 2023 raise, that’s wrong. HB 7053 in the 2023 regular session dealt with tourism development sponsorship and died in the Ways & Means Committee without passing.2LegiScan. FL H7053 2023 Regular Session A 2022 bill with the same number addressed statewide flooding and sea level rise resilience.3Florida Senate. CS/HB 7053 Statewide Flooding and Sea Level Rise Resilience Neither touched state employee pay. The raises lived entirely inside SB 2500.
Why the Legislature Funded the Raises
Florida entered the 2023 session with severe staffing shortages across state government. The Department of Corrections had thousands of unfilled officer positions. The Department of Juvenile Justice was running turnover above 60% for entry-level roles. The Agency for Persons with Disabilities reported vacancy rates between 20% and 46% at its residential facilities.
The pay gap was the main driver. Direct-care state workers were earning roughly $14 per hour while agencies paid private contractors $47 to $67 per hour to fill the same jobs. Applications had dropped sharply at many agencies. Florida also runs one of the leanest state workforces in the country relative to population, so each vacancy carried extra weight.
The 5% raise, combined with the targeted corrections and law enforcement increases, was the legislature’s third consecutive attempt to close the gap between state pay and what private employers and local governments were offering for comparable work.
What the Raise Did to Your FRS Contributions and Pension
A raise changes both what you pay into the Florida Retirement System now and what you’ll collect from it later.
On the contribution side, most FRS members pay a mandatory 3% of gross salary into the system.4Florida Retirement System. FRS Employer Statutory Contribution Rates 2022-2026 The rate has held steady since 2011 and applies across Regular, Special Risk, Senior Management, and nearly every other class. A 5% raise means the 3% withheld from each paycheck grows by 5% as well.
On the benefit side, the FRS pension formula multiplies average final compensation by years of service and a class-specific multiplier. For members hired before July 1, 2011, average final compensation is based on the highest five consecutive years of earnings. For members hired on or after that date, it’s the highest eight years. Either way, a 2023 raise pushes up the salary figures that feed the average, and the effect is largest for employees close to retirement, where one or two higher-paid years can meaningfully lift the final number.
Federal Taxes and Payroll Withholding
Florida has no state income tax, so federal withholding is the piece that shrinks the raise before it hits your account. A standard increase simply adjusts your regular withholding based on your W-4. If any portion was paid retroactively as a lump sum covering prior pay periods, that lump sum counts as supplemental wages, and employers may withhold federal income tax on it at a flat 22% rather than at your usual bracket.5Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Publication 15-T
Payroll taxes also apply. Social Security tax hits earnings up to $184,500 in 2026 at 6.2% for employees.6Social Security Administration. Contribution and Benefit Base Most state employees earn well below that cap, so the entire raise is subject to Social Security tax. Medicare adds another 1.45% with no cap. Roughly 7.65% of any raise goes to FICA before anything else.
How 2023 Fits the Larger Pattern
The 2023 increase wasn’t a one-off. The legislature approved raises in 2021 and 2022 before the 5% bump, and the pattern continued into the 2025-2026 budget, which included $49 million for pay increases covering more than 16,200 state sworn law enforcement officers, a $60,000 minimum base salary, a 10% raise for entry-level sworn officers, and a 15% increase for veterans with at least five years of state service.7Office of the Governor. Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Florida Fiscal Year 2025-2026 Budget
Whether the cumulative raises have closed the gap is still unsettled. Agencies losing workers to private employers paying 50% or more above state salaries needed several years of significant increases just to get competitive, and the state is still rebuilding a pipeline of applicants willing to take public-sector jobs at current pay. Employees who stayed through the lean years, however, have now seen multiple consecutive raises land on their base salary, which carries forward into every future paycheck and every future pension calculation.