Are UN staff actually overpaid?
Noblemaire is in the eye of the beholder
This week’s commentary is a response to a reader request from last week. As always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions!
During the opening meeting of the Fifth Committee in October, the new U.S. representative for management and reform singled out the compensation of UN staff as an area requiring reform, saying:
…staff compensation costs, which comprise 70% of the regular budget, must be brought into line with common sense benchmarks. UN staff currently out-earn their civil service counterparts in every Member State, including the United States, by wide margins on base salary alone. And unlike their civil service counterparts, many UN staff also receive generous housing subsidies, tertiary education grants for their children, and significant tax exemptions. These are a flagrant examples of the lack of common sense in this institution.1
Right now the focus is on cost-cutting measures such as relocating staff to lower-cost duty stations and on reducing benefits paid to staff. But in focusing so narrowly on reducing the levels of allowances and entitlements, Member States are missing an opportunity to reflect on the appropriateness of current arrangements.
The UN compensation package is not merely a cost driver; it shapes the form and function of the international civil service. The optimal package is one that is not only affordable, but which also enables the international civil service to effectively respond to contemporary challenges and requirements. Elements that made sense at the time they were introduced might no longer align with contemporary requirements given changes in mandates and staff demographics, as well as broader geopolitical shifts. Member States should therefore focus on whether the fundamental logic underpinning existing compensation arrangements remains fit for purpose today.
Salaries and benefits 101
UN salaries and benefits are intended to underpin “the development of a single unified international civil service through the application of common personnel standards, methods and arrangements”.2
Key terms
The UN common system is the system of salaries, allowances, and conditions of service applicable to the majority of organizations in the UN system.
The International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) is an expert body established by the UN General Assembly “for the regulation and coordination of the conditions of service of the UN common system”. The functions and powers of the ICSC are set out in its statute. Under the ICSC statute, the General Assembly retains decision-making authority over certain allowances and benefits, including dependency allowances and language incentives for staff in the Professional and higher categories, education grant, home leave, repatriation grant and termination indemnity. The ICSC has been delegated the authority to establish rates for other allowances and the post adjustment (i.e., cost of living adjustment) applicable to each duty station.3
Under the Noblemaire principle, pay for international staff is set at a level that allows the international civil service to recruit from all Member States. This principle stems from a 1921 report on the organization of the Secretariat of the League of Nations drafted by a commission chaired by Georges Noblemaire, which stated:
We admit that the salaries which we propose we based on those of the highest-paid Civil Services in the world, i.e., those of the British Empire. We do not see how any other course could have been followed, since, if lower salaries had been offered, it would be impossible to obtain the service of Britishers of the required standing, or, if the United States join the League, of any North-Americans.4
The comparator civil service for determining salaries under the Noblemaire principle is the highest-paid national civil service. The U.S. federal civil service has served as the comparator since the establishment of the UN in 1945.
The relationship between UN salaries and comparator salaries is represented by the net remuneration margin, which compares U.S. federal civil service salaries in Washington, D.C., to UN salaries in New York, adjusted for differences in cost of living. The desirable range set by the General Assembly is to maintain UN salaries at 110-120% of comparator levels, with a desirable midpoint of 115%.
Applicability
Because the ICSC statute was adopted through a General Assembly resolution, it applies to the UN, including the funds and programmes. Other organizations that are part of the UN system5 such as the specialized agencies and related organizations are not bound by decisions of the General Assembly but can opt into the UN common system through acceptance of the ICSC statute. Currently, all organizations of the UN system except the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group participate in the UN common system.
Are UN staff overpaid?
Whether international civil servants are overcompensated is a matter of perspective. UN staff—including those working in human resources policy and representatives of staff unions—will obviously have a different view from Fifth Committee delegates, who are not as generously remunerated. But compensation for UN international staff is lower than that of other international organizations such as the IMF, World Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. And it is much higher than the average wages of local populations in field duty stations.
On the other hand, whether international civil servants are paid more than their comparator counterparts is a matter of fact. This year, the ICSC confirmed that the U.S. federal civil service remains the highest-paid civil service on a net cash compensation basis, adjusted for cost of living and exchange rates, by a fairly significant margin.6 Although the ICSC calculation of the net remuneration margin shows UN salaries at 117% of U.S. salaries, this figure obscures the fact that UN pay (salary and post adjustment) is more than 26% higher than U.S. federal civil service pay (salary and locality adjustment) in New York.7
A premium of this magnitude is not necessary for compensation to remain in line with the Noblemaire principle. For example, reducing the net remuneration margin to 100-110%, with a desirable midpoint of 105% (which would still afford UN staff a substantial premium under an apples-to-apples comparison of compensation in New York), would be enough to ensure that UN salaries and benefits are not a disincentive for U.S. civil servants to join the UN system. With all of the cuts across federal departments and agencies under the Trump administration, U.S. civil servants seeking work in the UN system would no doubt be content with salaries at parity with those of the U.S. federal civil service.
With regard to allowances and entitlements, the fundamental logic of Noblemaire should also apply, in that these should be set at a level such that overall UN compensation is not a disincentive for external candidates to join the UN system. Today, when many staff have multiple nationalities and multicultural families, using nationality as the main criteria for eligibility for benefits seems increasingly anachronistic. The original intent of many of the allowances currently paid has been lost over time in the policies and procedures put in place to implement them.
A case in point is the education grant to expatriate staff, which was approved by the General Assembly in 1946, when it adopted resolution 82(I). The concern of the U.S. and European Union over the level of the education grant is not without merit. Originally, the education grant was intended to account for the fact that expatriate staff members required additional assistance, including with travel expenses, for children attending school in their home country. Today, however, the education grant essentially serves as additional compensation to eligible staff rather than something necessary to remove a disincentive for joining the international civil service.
There are ways to square the circle, allowing the education grant to remain available for its original purpose while reducing the likelihood of abuse. For example, eligibility could be adjusted such that it is not primarily based on nationality, and a limit to the number of years it is payable for could be introduced. These are the type of proposals that the ICSC needs to be considering as part of its ongoing comprehensive review of the compensation package rather than tweaking around the edges.
Final thoughts
It would be a pity if the ongoing negotiations on the UN common system culminate in a short-sighted cost cutting exercise that weakens the ability of the international civil service to respond to the challenges facing the world today. A strategic approach is necessary to ensure that Member States have the information required to make informed decisions when considering the results of the comprehensive review of the compensation package next year. Member States must push the ICSC to think outside the box and to critically examine the appropriateness of the current setup of the UN common system and whether the rationale for each element of the compensation package remains sound in enabling an affordable and effective international civil service. Without such explicit guidance, the ICSC is unlikely to proceed with a level of ambition that will meet the requirements of the moment.
Member States should be cognizant of how interconnected the compensation system is to both budgets and personnel policy, and the need to look at all three elements holistically to address longstanding problems and avoid unintended negative consequences. At its core, the international civil service remains an institution rooted in an early twentieth-century conception of a civil service. It continues to be marked by rigid hierarchies between “professional” and “general service” staff and between “internationally recruited” and “national” staff. Each of these categories has its own compensation arrangements, and there are high barriers—in terms of both policy and organizational culture—to moving between categories. This persistence of this de facto class system within the UN is not only a source of internal friction, but can make it difficult for organizations to value and heed local perspectives despite the lip service paid to national and local ownership.8
The ICSC should also be examining ways to address these fundamental conceptual issues in the setup of the international civil service. In parallel, the General Assembly should reduce the barriers to movement between the national and international categories, such as the examination requirements for conversion from general service to international professional posts in the Secretariat. It should also allow the Secretariat to move away from defining personnel requirements using rigid staffing tables. Meeting personnel requirements through a staffing allocation in the budget as opposed to a staffing table would allow heads of entities to fill relevant functions—whether clerical and professional—with the most suitable candidates regardless of whether they were nationally or internationally recruited. Beyond allowing managers to better respond to changing needs, such discretion would, of course, have the ancillary benefit of reducing personnel costs.
© 2025 Eugene Chen under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations University.
Bartos, J. (2025, October 6). Statement delivered during the first meeting of the Fifth Committee, 80th session of the General Assembly. https://usun.usmission.gov/statement-at-the-fifth-committee-1st-administrative-and-budgetary-plenary-meeting-general-assembly-80th-session/
United Nations (2023). Statute of the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC/1/Rev.3), Article 9. https://icsc.un.org/Resources/General/Publications/statute.pdf
Statute of the International Civil Service Commission, Articles 10 and 11.
League of Nations (1921). Organization of the Secretariat and the International Labour Office (pp. 51-52).
The UN consists of its six main organs and its subsidiary bodies, including the funds and programmes and related entities. The UN system consists of the organizations, including the UN, that coordinate through the Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB).
United Nations (2025). Report of the International Civil Service Commission (A/80/30) (pp. 36). https://undocs.org/en/A/80/30.
This figure represents the difference at the ICSC reference point for both salary scales, namely the P-4 (VI) level for the UN common system and a weighted average of the GS-13 (VI) and GS-14 (VI) grades in the U.S. general schedule. The primary reason for this disparity between the net remuneration margin and the actual pay disparity in New York is the vast difference in how the ICSC and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management account for differences in the cost of living between New York and Washington.
Chen, E. (2024). Easier Said than Done: Overcoming Coherence Challenges Within the United Nations System. New York University Center on International Cooperation. https://cic.nyu.edu/resources/overcoming-coherence-challenges-within-the-un/