Which VHA employee groups saw the largest bonus increases or decreases in 2025?

1. HR personnel: the biggest nominal rollback — a near‑15% cut for many who had received SSR boosts

The most dramatic change reported was the VA’s decision to end a Biden‑era Special Salary Rate that had given nearly 10,000 human resources officials roughly a 15% pay bump, a measure the department now says will be terminated at the end of Fiscal Year 2025, effectively axing that premium pay for many HR employees ^[1]. Federal News Network obtained a VA memo saying SSRs and related recruitment/retention pay supplements (CSIs) “will be terminated at the conclusion of the last pay period for fiscal year 2025,” signaling the largest single reversal of elevated pay levels called out in reporting ^[1]. That rollback functions as a large decrease in bonus‑style compensation for that defined employee group rather than a negotiated across‑the‑board raise.

2. Veteran‑facing staff: steep declines in retention incentives approved, shrinking award volume by over 60%

Separately, VA data show the department issued far fewer retention incentives in the most recent year — approving 7,485 this year compared with 19,484 the prior year — a more than 60% decrease in approvals that primarily affects veteran‑facing roles where retention incentives were used to hold scarce staff ^[2]. Federal News Network reported both the numerical collapse and related concerns from watchers that the department was using incentives less frequently even as it lost thousands of employees in veteran‑facing positions, linking incentive declines to functionally reduced bonus availability for clinical and frontline roles ^[2].

3. Title distinctions matter: VHA clinical pay rules limit visibility of “bonuses” for medical staff

Any attempt to compare “largest increases” across VHA groups hits a legal and reporting limit: VHA medical personnel are paid under Title 38, while many non‑medical VHA employees fall under Title 5 or hybrid rules — and the SSR action described applied to Title 5/nonclinical personnel rather than Title 38 medical pay systems, so the cancellation impacts are concentrated in certain employee classes and may not show up as identical changes for clinicians ^[1]. Reporting makes clear the department’s pay authorities and the special salary rate were agency‑level interventions for nonclinical skill gaps rather than across‑the‑board clinical bonus programs ^[1].

4. Oversight and recoupment: decreases tied to scrutiny of improperly awarded incentives

Part of the context for fewer awards is oversight: VA watchdog work led to the recoupment of about 90% of improperly awarded bonuses and flagged specific cases such as a relocation incentive paid to someone who never relocated, which accompanies reporting that incentive approvals fell sharply and that the inspector general continued to identify improperly granted awards ^[2]. That oversight dynamic both explains some of the reduction in net incentives and signals an institutional push to curb what had looked like unchecked bonus use in prior years ^[2].

5. What reporting does not show — limits and competing explanations

Available sources document large decreases (SSR termination for HR and a >60% drop in retention incentive approvals) but do not identify other VHA groups that experienced comparably large increases in 2025; there is no reporting in the provided set of new, significant bonus hikes for clinical staff or other discrete VHA populations during 2025, and broader state bonus programs cited (Virginia state employee bonuses) are not VHA actions and cannot be conflated with Department of Veterans Affairs pay policy without further sourcing ^{[3] [4] [5]}. The VA justified SSR rollbacks in part as a budgetary tradeoff and to normalize pay authorities across agencies, but advocates might view SSRs as necessary to recruit scarce skills — both perspectives appear in the record ^[1].