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Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI

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

Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 27.62% 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, 27.62%: + $23,935
Annual rate: $110,594

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

Paid #16, 39th in what it buys

−23Places lost once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$105,506at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $110,594. Local price level 104.8 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 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI

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	28,822	29,788	30,746	31,701	32,657	33,217	34,165	35,120	35,159	36,050
GS-2	32,407	33,177	34,252	35,159	35,552	36,598	37,643	38,688	39,733	40,778
GS-3	35,361	36,540	37,719	38,899	40,078	41,257	42,436	43,615	44,795	45,974
GS-4	39,694	41,017	42,340	43,664	44,987	46,311	47,634	48,958	50,281	51,604
GS-5	44,410	45,891	47,371	48,852	50,332	51,812	53,293	54,773	56,254	57,734
GS-6	49,505	51,155	52,805	54,455	56,106	57,756	59,406	61,056	62,706	64,356
GS-7	55,012	56,846	58,680	60,514	62,347	64,181	66,015	67,849	69,683	71,517
GS-8	60,923	62,954	64,984	67,015	69,045	71,075	73,106	75,136	77,167	79,197
GS-9	67,290	69,534	71,777	74,021	76,264	78,508	80,752	82,995	85,239	87,482
GS-10	74,101	76,571	79,040	81,510	83,979	86,449	88,918	91,387	93,857	96,326
GS-11	81,415	84,130	86,844	89,559	92,273	94,988	97,702	100,417	103,131	105,845
GS-12	97,582	100,835	104,088	107,341	110,594	113,847	117,100	120,353	123,606	126,859
GS-13	116,038	119,907	123,775	127,643	131,511	135,379	139,247	143,116	146,984	150,852
GS-14	137,123	141,694	146,265	150,837	155,408	159,979	164,551	169,122	173,693	178,265
GS-15	161,291	166,668	172,045	177,421	182,798	188,174	193,551	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 #16 by the number on the paycheck and only #39 once local prices are counted — a 27.62% 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
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI$105,506

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

Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX pays $6,300 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 27 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
36	Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX	$104,294	98.1	$106,351
37	New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT-PA	$119,546	112.6	$106,204
38	Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT-ME-VT	$114,893	108.3	$106,121
39	Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI	$110,594	104.8	$105,506
40	Sacramento-Roseville, CA-NV	$112,449	106.7	$105,418
41	Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC	$102,951	97.9	$105,115
42	Albany-Schenectady, NY-MA	$104,658	99.6	$105,114

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: Minneapolis and St. Paul. 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: 36 counties in all, which is among the broader definitions in the system. Plenty of towns nobody would associate with Minneapolis are paid at this rate. What decides it is the county your duty station sits in, and the full list is below.

Minneapolis
St. Paul

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 36 counties across 2 states (MN, WI). Crossing a state line inside it does not change your pay; crossing out of it does.

Every county in this locality

36 places paid at this rate

Anoka County, MN
Benton County, MN
Blue Earth County, MN
Brown County, MN
Carver County, MN
Chisago County, MN
Dakota County, MN
Dodge County, MN
Fillmore County, MN
Goodhue County, MN
Hennepin County, MN
Isanti County, MN
Kanabec County, MN
Le Sueur County, MN
McLeod County, MN
Meeker County, MN
Mille Lacs County, MN
Morrison County, MN
Mower County, MN
Nicollet County, MN
Olmsted County, MN
Pine County, MN
Ramsey County, MN
Rice County, MN
Scott County, MN
Sherburne County, MN
Sibley County, MN
Stearns County, MN
Steele County, MN
Wabasha County, MN
Waseca County, MN
Washington County, MN
Wright County, MN
Pierce County, WI
Polk County, WI
St. Croix County, WI

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 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI in 2026 that percentage is 27.62%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $110,594 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 27.62% 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 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI

$110,594

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #16 on the payslip, #39 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.