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Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK

2026 editionEffective January 202658 locality pay areasData last changed 2026-08-25

Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 27.26% adjustment is actually worth once local prices are counted, and which cells stop growing because they hit the statutory ceiling.

How the number is assembled

Base rate before locality: $86,659
Locality pay, 27.26%: + $23,623
Annual rate: $110,282

Biweekly is the hourly rate times 80, the way OPM derives it — not the annual rate divided by 26.

Paid #17, 31st in what it buys

−14Places lost once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$106,976at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $110,282. Local price level 103.1 against a national average of 100.

Ceiling watch

3 of 150cells are pinned to the $197,200 statutory ceiling. Inside that band a step increase adds nothing.

Every 2026 rate in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK

All 150 cells, read from the published OPM table. Click any cell and the bar at the top of the page moves onto it — or use the arrow keys once a cell is selected.

Annual rates in U.S. dollars, read cell by cell from the published OPM table rather than calculated. The cell marked ◀ is GS-12 step 5, the one quoted at the top of this page. Cells marked ▲ have been cut down to the statutory ceiling of $197,200 — the printed number is lower than the formula would give.

Grade	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
GS-1	28,740	29,704	30,659	31,611	32,565	33,123	34,069	35,021	35,060	35,948
GS-2	32,315	33,084	34,155	35,060	35,452	36,494	37,537	38,579	39,621	40,663
GS-3	35,261	36,437	37,613	38,789	39,965	41,141	42,316	43,492	44,668	45,844
GS-4	39,582	40,901	42,221	43,541	44,860	46,180	47,500	48,819	50,139	51,459
GS-5	44,285	45,761	47,238	48,714	50,190	51,666	53,143	54,619	56,095	57,571
GS-6	49,365	51,011	52,656	54,302	55,947	57,593	59,238	60,884	62,529	64,175
GS-7	54,857	56,685	58,514	60,343	62,172	64,000	65,829	67,658	69,487	71,315
GS-8	60,751	62,776	64,801	66,825	68,850	70,875	72,900	74,924	76,949	78,974
GS-9	67,100	69,338	71,575	73,812	76,049	78,287	80,524	82,761	84,998	87,235
GS-10	73,892	76,355	78,817	81,280	83,742	86,205	88,667	91,130	93,592	96,055
GS-11	81,186	83,892	86,599	89,306	92,013	94,720	97,426	100,133	102,840	105,547
GS-12	97,307	100,551	103,795	107,038	110,282	113,526	116,770	120,014	123,258	126,502
GS-13	115,711	119,568	123,426	127,283	131,140	134,997	138,855	142,712	146,569	150,426
GS-14	136,736	141,294	145,853	150,411	154,970	159,528	164,086	168,645	173,203	177,762
GS-15	160,836	166,198	171,559	176,921	182,282	187,644	193,005	197,200	197,200	197,200

Source: OPM 2026 General Schedule salary tables. Every cell on this page was independently recomputed from the base table and the locality percentage and matched the published figure to the dollar.

Is that a lot? Not until you count local prices

Read this before the number. Locality pay is calculated from what private employers in the same region pay for comparable work. It is not a cost-of-living adjustment, and OPM says so in as many words. Here the distinction matters a great deal. The area ranks #17 by the number on the paycheck and only #31 once local prices are counted — a 27.26% adjustment that a high cost base takes back.

Exhibit 1 · nobody else publishes this

GS-12 step 5, after local prices

Each bar is the 2026 salary divided by that area's price level, so the bars are comparable in what they actually buy. Longer is better. Price levels are BEA Regional Price Parities for 2024, where the U.S. average is 100.

Laredo, TX$121,175
Huntsville-Decatur, AL-TN$121,137
Houston-The Woodlands, TX$118,616
St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL$118,596
Columbus-Marion-Zanesville, OH$118,543
Davenport-Moline, IA-IL$115,700
Atlanta--Athens-Clarke County--Sandy Springs, GA-AL$114,926
Dayton-Springfield-Kettering, OH$113,514
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK$106,976

Highest on paper: San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA at $126,817. Highest in what it buys: Laredo, TX at $121,175 of purchasing power from a salary of $105,369. Sources: OPM 2026 salary tables; BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. Price data lags the pay tables, and metropolitan boundaries do not match locality boundaries exactly — the nearest metropolitan area is used as the proxy.

Where raises stop being raises

In this locality 3 of the 150 cells are pinned to the $197,200 ceiling. Inside that band a step increase is worth nothing at all: the formula produces a bigger number, the law cuts it back, and the payslip does not move.

GS-15

Step 8

Hits the ceiling here. The 2 step increases above it add nothing.

This matters most when comparing job offers. Two identical grades in two localities can look like a clear win on paper while the higher-paid one has already run out of room to grow.

What is next to it

Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN pays $7,894 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 23 such areas above this one.

These are the localities immediately around this one once local prices are taken into account. The middle column is the price level, where 100 is the national average — lower is cheaper. Prices are shown to one decimal place; the adjusted figures are computed from the published index, which carries three.

#	Locality	On paper	Prices	What it buys
28	Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC	$105,932	98.2	$107,921
29	Albuquerque-Santa Fe-Las Vegas, NM	$102,544	95.5	$107,324
30	Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN	$102,388	95.7	$106,993
31	Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK	$110,282	103.1	$106,976
32	Denver-Aurora, CO	$113,107	105.8	$106,925
33	Tucson-Nogales, AZ	$103,367	96.9	$106,678
34	Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA	$116,071	108.9	$106,601

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: Dallas and Fort Worth. They are not all in the same state, and that is the point worth taking away: the area crosses 2 state lines and pays the same percentage on both sides of every one of them. A state border is not a pay border.

The area reaches far beyond those city limits: 29 counties in all, which is among the broader definitions in the system. Plenty of towns nobody would associate with Dallas are paid at this rate. What decides it is the county your duty station sits in, and the full list is below.

Dallas
Fort Worth

Am I actually in this locality?

Locality is decided by your duty station — the place you physically report to — not by where you live and not by where your agency is headquartered. If you report to a building in one county and live in the next one over, the building decides your pay. Telework arrangements have their own rules and can change which locality applies, so confirm with your HR office rather than assuming.

This locality covers 29 counties across 2 states (OK, TX). Crossing a state line inside it does not change your pay; crossing out of it does.

Every county in this locality

29 places paid at this rate

Collin County, TX
Cooke County, TX
Dallas County, TX
Delta County, TX
Denton County, TX
Ellis County, TX
Fannin County, TX
Grayson County, TX
Henderson County, TX
Hill County, TX
Hood County, TX
Hopkins County, TX
Hunt County, TX
Jack County, TX
Johnson County, TX
Kaufman County, TX
Montague County, TX
Navarro County, TX
Palo Pinto County, TX
Parker County, TX
Rains County, TX
Rockwall County, TX
Somervell County, TX
Tarrant County, TX
Van Zandt County, TX
Wise County, TX
Bryan County, OK
Carter County, OK
Love County, OK

Source: OPM 2026 locality pay area definitions. FIPS codes are omitted here for readability. Military installations that OPM assigns to a different locality than the county around them are listed separately and are not shown in this list.

How the number is built

Every General Schedule grade has ten steps. The base rate comes from the nationwide table, and the locality percentage is applied on top of it. For Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK in 2026 that percentage is 27.26%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $110,282 at GS-12 step 5.

No General Schedule rate may exceed Level IV of the Executive Schedule, $197,200 in 2026. Because this locality pays 27.26% over base, that ceiling is reached inside the published table: 3 of the 150 cells here are printed at the cap rather than at what the formula produces.

The percentage is applied to the base rate, the result is rounded, and only then is it checked against the ceiling — in that order. Doing it the other way round produces different numbers at the top of the schedule, which is one reason published figures sometimes disagree. Every cell here was recomputed independently and matched the OPM table to the dollar.

Work out a different grade and step

GS-12, step 5 in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK

$110,282

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #17 on the payslip, #31 once local prices are counted.

Grade

Step

Starting your first federal job? A first appointment is set at step 1 of the grade unless the agency uses the superior qualifications authority (5 U.S.C. 5333; 5 CFR 531.212). The step above defaults to 5, the middle of the grade, because that is the cell this site ranks every area by.

Rates are recomputed from the published base table and this area's percentage, in the order the law sets: percentage first, rounding second, statutory ceiling last.