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Title 22 — Foreign Relations and IntercourseRelease 119-73

§3972 Special differentials

Title 22 › Chapter CHAPTER 52— - FOREIGN SERVICE › Subchapter SUBCHAPTER IV— - COMPENSATION › § 3972

Last updated Apr 6, 2026|Official source

Summary

The Secretary may pay extra money, called special differentials, to Foreign Service officers who regularly must do a lot more work than normal. For USAID Foreign Service criminal investigators, the USAID Inspector General must keep those extra payments low enough so that, when added to basic pay for any pay period, the total does not go above the bi-weekly premium pay limits that apply to other federal criminal investigators. That rule is retroactive to January 1, 2013. Foreign Service officers may still be given compensatory time off.

Full Legal Text

Title 22, §3972

Foreign Relations and Intercourse — Source: USLM XML via OLRC

(a)The Secretary may pay special differentials, in addition to compensation otherwise authorized, to Foreign Service officers who are required because of the nature of their assignments to perform additional work on a regular basis in substantial excess of normal requirements.
(b)The Inspector General of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) shall limit the payment of special differentials to USAID Foreign Service criminal investigators to levels at which the aggregate of basic pay and special differential for any pay period would equal, for such criminal investigators, the bi-weekly pay limitations on premium pay regularly placed on other criminal investigators within the Federal law enforcement community. This provision shall be retroactive to January 1, 2013.
(c)Nothing in this chapter, or in subchapter V of chapter 55 of title 5 shall preclude the granting of compensatory time off for Foreign Service officers.

Legislative History

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

Amendments

2016—Subsec. (b). Pub. L. 114–323 added subsec. (b). 1994—Subsec. (b). Pub. L. 103–236 struck out subsec. (b) which read as follows: “Before implementing any proposal to limit either the number of Foreign Service officers who may receive a special differential under subsection (a) of this section or the amounts of such special differentials, the Secretary shall submit such proposal to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives.”

Reference

Citations & Metadata

Citation

22 U.S.C. § 3972

Title 22 — Foreign Relations and Intercourse

Last Updated

Apr 6, 2026

Release point: 119-73