The Federal Reserve Board has put in place a new pay schedule for board employees with a top salary of $130,900 intended to meet competition from the private sector for key senior workers. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the board that oversees the nation's central banking operations, reported to the chairmen of the House and Senate Budget committees last week that the board developed the new pay structure using "a pay survey of employers in our competitive areas {Washington and New York}, which has resulted in modest to no increases for lower grades, but a meaningful increase for upper grades and professional personnel." Greenspan said current salaries range from $11,614 a year to $85,000 for employees who are in positions below that of board officers. Salaries for the seven levels of officers -- who have either major responsibilities in monetary policy or regulatory matters or who manage large numbers of people -- range from $62,200 to $130,900. The Federal Reserve -- which has found itself steadily losing key economists, lawyers and financial analysts to private employers able to offer higher pay -- has long been authorized to set any pay schedule it wished but in the past has generally followed Civil Service pay scales. Originally, the Fed intended to phase in the increases over three years. But Greenspan told the committees, "Because of the competitive pressures from the compensation increases by the other financial regulatory agencies, however, the board is contemplating accelerating the phase-in for employees other than higher level officers, which would result in full implementation for most employees by Jan. 1, 1990." Salaries for the presidentially appointed members of the board, six governors and the chairman, were not increased. They are set by law at $82,500 for the governors and $89,500 for the chairman. By comparison, the vice president, the speaker of the House and the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court make $115,000. Employees at the top of the Senior Executive Service, Level I, earn $99,500, and members of Congress $89,500. Under the recommended increases voted down earlier this year, those salaries would have gone to $175,000, $155,000 and $135,000, respectively. The Fed chairman's pay would also have risen to $135,000 and that of the other six governors to $125,000. Under the federal white-collar pay scale that will be in effect next year, salaries will range from $10,581 for a GS-1 on step 1 to $78,200 for some GS-16s and above. The new pay schedule, which covers all 1,500 board employees, is not quite as high as those in effect in the private sector or at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which, like the 11 other regional Federal Reserve banks, technically is a private corporation free to set pay as it wishes, according to a board spokesman. At the end of last year, the president of the New York Fed was being paid $198,500 a year. The salaries of the other reserve bank presidents ranged from $177,500 in Chicago to $133,000 in Minneapolis.