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Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN

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

Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 18.15% 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, 18.15%: + $15,729
Annual rate: $102,388

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

Paid #50, 30th in what it buys

+20Places gained once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$106,993at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $102,388. Local price level 95.7 against a national average of 100.

Ceiling watch

ClearNo cell in this area reaches the $197,200 ceiling, so every step increase is worth its full face value.

Every 2026 rate in Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN

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	26,683	27,577	28,465	29,348	30,233	30,752	31,630	32,514	32,550	33,375
GS-2	30,002	30,715	31,710	32,550	32,914	33,882	34,850	35,817	36,785	37,752
GS-3	32,737	33,829	34,920	36,012	37,104	38,196	39,287	40,379	41,471	42,562
GS-4	36,748	37,973	39,199	40,424	41,649	42,874	44,099	45,325	46,550	47,775
GS-5	41,115	42,486	43,856	45,227	46,597	47,968	49,338	50,709	52,079	53,450
GS-6	45,832	47,359	48,887	50,415	51,942	53,470	54,998	56,525	58,053	59,581
GS-7	50,930	52,628	54,325	56,023	57,721	59,419	61,117	62,814	64,512	66,210
GS-8	56,402	58,282	60,162	62,042	63,922	65,801	67,681	69,561	71,441	73,320
GS-9	62,297	64,374	66,451	68,528	70,605	72,682	74,759	76,836	78,914	80,991
GS-10	68,603	70,889	73,175	75,461	77,747	80,034	82,320	84,606	86,892	89,178
GS-11	75,374	77,887	80,400	82,913	85,426	87,939	90,452	92,965	95,478	97,991
GS-12	90,341	93,353	96,364	99,376	102,388	105,399	108,411	111,423	114,434	117,446
GS-13	107,428	111,009	114,590	118,171	121,752	125,334	128,915	132,496	136,077	139,658
GS-14	126,947	131,180	135,412	139,644	143,876	148,108	152,340	156,572	160,805	165,037
GS-15	149,323	154,300	159,278	164,256	169,233	174,211	179,189	184,166	189,144	194,122

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 works in your favor: the area ranks #50 on the size of the paycheck but #30 once local prices are counted. The salary looks unremarkable and buys more than it appears to.

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
Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN$106,993

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.

Do raises ever stop counting here?

No. Every one of the 150 cells in this area stays below the $197,200 statutory ceiling.

No General Schedule rate may exceed Level IV of the Executive Schedule, $197,200 in 2026. In the highest-paying localities that ceiling is reached inside the published table, and step increases in that band add nothing at all to the payslip. At 18.15% this area stays clear of it, so every step increase is worth its full face value all the way to GS-15 step 10.

What is next to it

Corpus Christi-Kingsville-Alice, TX pays $451 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 3 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
27	Richmond, VA	$105,967	97.9	$108,286
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

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after three principal cities: Indianapolis, Carmel and Muncie. All three are paid from the same table at the same percentage, which surprises people who assume the largest of the three commands more than the others. Size of city has nothing to do with it; the area is one unit.

The area reaches far beyond those city limits: 34 counties in all, which is among the broader definitions in the system. Plenty of towns nobody would associate with Indianapolis are paid at this rate. What decides it is the county your duty station sits in, and the full list is below.

Indianapolis
Carmel
Muncie

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 34 counties in IN. A duty station anywhere inside this list is paid at exactly the same rate.

Every county in this locality

34 places paid at this rate

Bartholomew County, IN
Benton County, IN
Blackford County, IN
Boone County, IN
Brown County, IN
Carroll County, IN
Clinton County, IN
Decatur County, IN
Delaware County, IN
Fayette County, IN
Fountain County, IN
Grant County, IN
Hamilton County, IN
Hancock County, IN
Hendricks County, IN
Henry County, IN
Jackson County, IN
Jennings County, IN
Johnson County, IN
Lawrence County, IN
Madison County, IN
Marion County, IN
Monroe County, IN
Montgomery County, IN
Morgan County, IN
Owen County, IN
Putnam County, IN
Randolph County, IN
Rush County, IN
Shelby County, IN
Tippecanoe County, IN
Tipton County, IN
Warren County, IN
Wayne County, IN

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 Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN in 2026 that percentage is 18.15%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $102,388 at GS-12 step 5.

No General Schedule rate may exceed Level IV of the Executive Schedule, $197,200 in 2026. At 18.15% this locality stays below that ceiling everywhere, so every step increase in the table below is worth its full face value — which is not the case in the highest-paying areas.

Steps are not evenly spaced, which catches out anyone trying to extrapolate from the first one. In the 2026 base table the gap between step 8 and step 9 of GS-1 is $46, while the gap between step 1 and step 2 is over $1,100. Every figure on this page is therefore read from the published table rather than derived from a formula.

Work out a different grade and step

GS-12, step 5 in Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN

$102,388

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #50 on the payslip, #30 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.