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Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS

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

Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 18.97% 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, 18.97%: + $16,439
Annual rate: $103,098

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

Paid #43, 16th in what it buys

+27Places gained once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$111,406at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $103,098. Local price level 92.5 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 Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS

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	26,868	27,769	28,662	29,552	30,443	30,966	31,849	32,739	32,776	33,607
GS-2	30,210	30,929	31,930	32,776	33,143	34,117	35,091	36,066	37,040	38,014
GS-3	32,964	34,063	35,163	36,262	37,361	38,461	39,560	40,659	41,758	42,858
GS-4	37,003	38,237	39,471	40,704	41,938	43,172	44,406	45,639	46,873	48,107
GS-5	41,400	42,780	44,160	45,541	46,921	48,301	49,681	51,061	52,441	53,821
GS-6	46,150	47,688	49,226	50,764	52,303	53,841	55,379	56,918	58,456	59,994
GS-7	51,283	52,993	54,702	56,412	58,122	59,831	61,541	63,250	64,960	66,670
GS-8	56,794	58,687	60,580	62,472	64,365	66,258	68,151	70,044	71,936	73,829
GS-9	62,729	64,821	66,912	69,004	71,095	73,187	75,278	77,370	79,461	81,553
GS-10	69,079	71,381	73,683	75,985	78,287	80,589	82,891	85,193	87,495	89,797
GS-11	75,897	78,427	80,958	83,488	86,019	88,549	91,080	93,610	96,141	98,671
GS-12	90,968	94,001	97,033	100,066	103,098	106,131	109,163	112,196	115,228	118,261
GS-13	108,173	111,779	115,385	118,991	122,597	126,203	129,809	133,415	137,021	140,627
GS-14	127,829	132,090	136,352	140,613	144,875	149,136	153,398	157,659	161,921	166,182
GS-15	150,359	155,371	160,383	165,396	170,408	175,420	180,432	185,444	190,457	195,469

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 #43 on the size of the paycheck but #16 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
Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS$111,406

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 18.97% 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

Omaha-Council Bluffs-Fremont, NE-IA pays $641 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 5 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
13	Detroit-Warren-Ann Arbor, MI	$111,894	100.3	$111,562
14	Des Moines-Ames-West Des Moines, IA	$102,266	91.7	$111,521
15	Omaha-Council Bluffs-Fremont, NE-IA	$102,457	91.9	$111,474
16	Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS	$103,098	92.5	$111,406
17	Hartford-East Hartford, CT-MA	$114,459	102.7	$111,400
18	Cincinnati-Wilmington-Maysville, OH-KY-IN	$105,663	95.4	$110,793
19	Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV	$104,883	94.7	$110,787

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: Kansas City and Overland Park. 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: 33 counties in all, which is among the broader definitions in the system. Plenty of towns nobody would associate with Kansas City are paid at this rate. What decides it is the county your duty station sits in, and the full list is below.

Kansas City
Overland Park

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 33 counties across 2 states (KS, MO). Crossing a state line inside it does not change your pay; crossing out of it does.

Every county in this locality

33 places paid at this rate

Andrew County, MO
Bates County, MO
Buchanan County, MO
Caldwell County, MO
Carroll County, MO
Cass County, MO
Clay County, MO
Clinton County, MO
Daviess County, MO
DeKalb County, MO
Gentry County, MO
Henry County, MO
Holt County, MO
Jackson County, MO
Johnson County, MO
Lafayette County, MO
Platte County, MO
Ray County, MO
Anderson County, KS
Atchison County, KS
Doniphan County, KS
Douglas County, KS
Franklin County, KS
Jackson County, KS
Jefferson County, KS
Johnson County, KS
Leavenworth County, KS
Linn County, KS
Miami County, KS
Osage County, KS
Shawnee County, KS
Wabaunsee County, KS
Wyandotte County, KS

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 Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS in 2026 that percentage is 18.97%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $103,098 at GS-12 step 5.

No General Schedule rate may exceed Level IV of the Executive Schedule, $197,200 in 2026. At 18.97% 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 Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS

$103,098

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #43 on the payslip, #16 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.