Wildland Firefighter Pay Gets Up to 42% Base Boost and 450% Daily Hazard Pay Under New Federal Bill

The Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act of 2025 is a major overhaul of how federal wildland firefighters are paid. It scraps the old pay structure for these high-risk jobs and replaces it with a new system that includes significantly higher base salaries and a massive daily bonus for deployments. This is a direct response to the long-standing issue that federal fire crews, who protect vast tracts of public land and private property, are often underpaid compared to their state and municipal counterparts, leading to high turnover.

The New Base Rate: A Necessary Raise

This bill creates special, higher base pay rates for federal wildland firefighters across the General Schedule (GS) pay scale, from GS-1 all the way up to GS-15. This new pay rate replaces the standard GS rate and counts as their official basic pay for everything else, like locality adjustments. The raises are weighted heavily toward the entry-level positions, where recruitment and retention are often the hardest. For example, a GS-1 firefighter gets a massive 42 percent boost to their base pay, while a GS-5 gets a 30 percent boost. The percentages taper off for higher grades, with a GS-15 seeing a 1.5 percent increase. This is a huge deal for the newest folks on the line, making the job much more financially viable than before. This section also ensures that prevailing rate employees—the trades and labor folks who often handle the heavy equipment—get a similar pay bump.

Incident Pay: 450% Bonus for Every Day Deployed

Beyond the base salary, the bill introduces a new system called "incident response premium pay" for when firefighters are actively deployed. When a covered employee is deployed to a qualifying incident—which includes wildfires, planned controlled burns, or even being pre-positioned for high-risk "severity incidents"—they get a daily bonus calculated at 450 percent of their normal hourly basic pay rate. Think about that: nearly five times their hourly rate for every day they are deployed. This provision recognizes the intense, often 16-hour days and high danger involved in fire response. However, there’s a catch: the total bonus pay an employee can receive is capped at $9,000 in any calendar year. Also, if a firefighter’s base pay is higher than a GS-10 Step 10, their bonus is calculated using the GS-10 Step 10 rate. For the average firefighter, this is a significant bump in take-home pay during fire season, but that $9,000 cap might be hit quickly during a particularly severe year, meaning the incentive drops off once the cap is met.

The Mandate for Rest and Recovery

One of the most critical, non-monetary benefits in the bill addresses burnout. The bill mandates paid rest and recuperation (R&R) leave immediately following deployment to a qualifying incident. The Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior must develop policies that set maximum deployment lengths and guarantee a minimum amount of R&R time afterward. Crucially, this leave is use-it-or-lose-it; it cannot be banked or saved up. This provision directly tackles the exhaustion and mental toll of fighting fires for weeks on end, ensuring that employees get mandatory downtime and recovery, not just a quick turnaround before the next assignment. For intermittent workers, they get paid for the time they are excused from duty, matching the R&R benefit.

When Does This Kick In?

This entire new pay structure is scheduled to take effect only after the current temporary federal wildland firefighter pay increases—which were funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and extended through recent appropriations—officially expire. To ensure there isn't a lapse in pay between the temporary raise ending and the permanent structure beginning, the bill includes a provision allowing up to $5 million to be transferred between Forest Service and Department of Interior Wildland Fire Management funds. This is just a smart administrative move to guarantee the transition is seamless and firefighters don't see a sudden drop in pay while the federal government switches systems.