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Laredo, TX

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

Laredo, TX GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 21.59% 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, 21.59%: + $18,710
Annual rate: $105,369

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

Paid #31, 1st in what it buys

+30Places gained once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$121,175at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $105,369. Local price level 87.0 against a national average of 100.

Ceiling watch

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

Every 2026 rate in Laredo, TX

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	27,460	28,380	29,293	30,203	31,114	31,647	32,551	33,460	33,498	34,347
GS-2	30,875	31,610	32,634	33,498	33,873	34,868	35,864	36,860	37,856	38,852
GS-3	33,690	34,814	35,937	37,061	38,184	39,308	40,431	41,555	42,678	43,802
GS-4	37,818	39,079	40,340	41,601	42,862	44,123	45,383	46,644	47,905	49,166
GS-5	42,312	43,723	45,133	46,543	47,954	49,364	50,775	52,185	53,596	55,006
GS-6	47,166	48,738	50,310	51,882	53,455	55,027	56,599	58,171	59,743	61,315
GS-7	52,413	54,160	55,907	57,654	59,402	61,149	62,896	64,643	66,391	68,138
GS-8	58,045	59,979	61,914	63,848	65,783	67,717	69,652	71,586	73,521	75,455
GS-9	64,111	66,248	68,386	70,523	72,661	74,799	76,936	79,074	81,211	83,349
GS-10	70,600	72,953	75,306	77,658	80,011	82,364	84,717	87,069	89,422	91,775
GS-11	77,568	80,155	82,741	85,327	87,913	90,499	93,086	95,672	98,258	100,844
GS-12	92,971	96,071	99,170	102,269	105,369	108,468	111,567	114,667	117,766	120,865
GS-13	110,556	114,241	117,926	121,612	125,297	128,983	132,668	136,353	140,039	143,724
GS-14	130,644	134,999	139,354	143,710	148,065	152,420	156,776	161,131	165,486	169,842
GS-15	153,670	158,793	163,915	169,038	174,161	179,283	184,406	189,528	194,651	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 works in your favor: the area ranks #31 on the size of the paycheck but #1 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

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 1 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 10

Hits the ceiling here. Only the top step is affected.

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

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
1	Laredo, TX	$105,369	87.0	$121,175
2	Huntsville-Decatur, AL-TN	$105,646	87.2	$121,137
3	Houston-The Woodlands, TX	$116,990	98.6	$118,616
4	St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL	$104,017	87.7	$118,596

Which cities does this cover?

This area is named after a single city, Laredo, and that is unusual: most locality pay areas are named after two or three. It does not mean the area is small — it means one city dominates it.

Those cities are the label, not the boundary. The area is defined as 3 named counties, and a duty station anywhere inside them is paid at this rate whether or not it is near any of the cities above. The list is below.

Laredo

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

Every county in this locality

3 places paid at this rate

Jim Hogg County, TX
La Salle County, TX
Webb County, TX

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 Laredo, TX in 2026 that percentage is 21.59%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $105,369 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 21.59% over base, that ceiling is reached inside the published table: 1 of the 150 cells here are printed at the cap rather than at what the formula produces.

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 Laredo, TX

$105,369

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #31 on the payslip, #1 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.