8th Pay Commission: How 'real' salary increased under 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th CPCs

While the 8th CPC will take several months to submit its recommendations, here's an analysis of how the real pay hike, which is the salary increase after accounting for inflation, changed under previous CPCs.

The 7th Pay Commission (7th CPC) recommended a uniform fitment factor of 2.57, but the real increase in pay provided by it was only 14.3%. While the 2.57 fitment factor of the 7th CPC hogged all the limelight, data from the previous pay commission's report shows that the real increase in pay under the 7th CPC was much lower when calculated as a percentage reduction from the previous increase under the 6th Pay Commission (6th CPC).

The 6th CPC had recommended a real increase in pay of 54%, whereas the 7th CPC provided only a 14.3% real increase.

Before the 7th CPC, the real pay had always increased from one pay commission to another. In fact, the 7th CPC was the first Pay Commission under which the quantum of real pay increase was lower than the previous pay commissions.

The following table shows the real pay increase for central government employees from the 2nd CPC to the 7th CPC:

Source: 7th CPC report

How did the 7th CPC calculate the 14.3% real pay increase?

The 7th CPC said that the basic pay at any level on 01.01.2016 (pay in the pay band + grade pay) would need to be multiplied by 2.57 to fix the pay of an employee in the new pay structure. "Of this multiple, 2.25 provides for merging of basic pay with DA, assumed at 125 percent on 01.01.2016, while the balance is the real increase being recommended by the Commission. The real increase works out to 14.2 percent (2.57÷2.25 = 1.1429)," the 7th CPC said in its report.