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I'm a new AUSA. I graduated law school in 2019 and I was hired with less than 5 full years of experience so I'm on the 4 YOE pay band. I should be going up to the 5 YOE pay band soon.

When does that happen?

It’s usually right around the end of April, so I’d say any time now.

Thanks, do we get a memo or something or are our paychecks suddenly just bigger?

Honestly, it’s varied. Some USAs *love* to walk around and hand out letters with raise/bonus information; sometimes your supervisor will tell you; sometimes no one tells you anything directly. I think there’s a rough correlation between how much money they’ve had to give out and how generous the increases have been, and how likely someone will tell you face to face.

At the very least, though, you’ll get a notification that something’s been added to your eOPF and you can go see the details.

But also, IME transparency about this stuff is VERY dependent on who’s responsible for it. One year during a budget freeze my supervior was like, “Hey congratulations, you’re getting a $1000 bonus!!” then fled my office before I could realize that meant *only* bonus, no raise; another supervisor in the same office at least told their supervisees flat out that it was a terrible budget year, so the office was only doing bonuses and no one was getting raises. (Discretionary raises, I mean, people still got bumped up to the next pay band if that was due.) So definitely ask someone you have a good relationship if you need more info.