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Omaha-Council Bluffs-Fremont, NE-IA

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

Omaha-Council Bluffs-Fremont, NE-IA GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 18.23% 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, 18.23%: + $15,798
Annual rate: $102,457

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

Paid #49, 15th in what it buys

+34Places gained once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$111,474at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $102,457. Local price level 91.9 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 Omaha-Council Bluffs-Fremont, NE-IA

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	26,701	27,596	28,484	29,368	30,254	30,773	31,651	32,536	32,572	33,398
GS-2	30,022	30,736	31,732	32,572	32,937	33,905	34,873	35,841	36,810	37,778
GS-3	32,759	33,852	34,944	36,037	37,129	38,221	39,314	40,406	41,499	42,591
GS-4	36,773	37,999	39,225	40,451	41,677	42,903	44,129	45,355	46,581	47,807
GS-5	41,143	42,514	43,886	45,257	46,629	48,000	49,372	50,743	52,115	53,486
GS-6	45,863	47,391	48,920	50,449	51,977	53,506	55,035	56,564	58,092	59,621
GS-7	50,964	52,663	54,362	56,061	57,760	59,459	61,158	62,857	64,556	66,255
GS-8	56,441	58,322	60,203	62,084	63,965	65,846	67,727	69,608	71,489	73,370
GS-9	62,339	64,418	66,496	68,575	70,653	72,732	74,810	76,889	78,967	81,045
GS-10	68,649	70,937	73,225	75,512	77,800	80,088	82,376	84,663	86,951	89,239
GS-11	75,425	77,940	80,454	82,969	85,484	87,999	90,513	93,028	95,543	98,058
GS-12	90,402	93,416	96,430	99,443	102,457	105,471	108,484	111,498	114,512	117,525
GS-13	107,501	111,084	114,668	118,251	121,835	125,418	129,002	132,585	136,169	139,753
GS-14	127,033	131,268	135,503	139,738	143,973	148,208	152,443	156,678	160,913	165,148
GS-15	149,424	154,405	159,386	164,367	169,348	174,329	179,310	184,291	189,272	194,253

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 #49 on the size of the paycheck but #15 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
Omaha-Council Bluffs-Fremont, NE-IA$111,474

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 18.23% 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

Des Moines-Ames-West Des Moines, IA pays $191 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 2 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
12	Birmingham-Hoover-Talladega, AL	$102,466	91.6	$111,809
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

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: Omaha, Council Bluffs and Fremont. 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.

Those cities are the label, not the boundary. The area is defined as 12 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.

Omaha
Council Bluffs
Fremont

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 12 counties across 2 states (IA, NE). Crossing a state line inside it does not change your pay; crossing out of it does.

Every county in this locality

12 places paid at this rate

Burt County, NE
Cass County, NE
Dodge County, NE
Douglas County, NE
Sarpy County, NE
Saunders County, NE
Washington County, NE
Fremont County, IA
Harrison County, IA
Mills County, IA
Pottawattamie County, IA
Shelby County, IA

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 Omaha-Council Bluffs-Fremont, NE-IA in 2026 that percentage is 18.23%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $102,457 at GS-12 step 5.

No General Schedule rate may exceed Level IV of the Executive Schedule, $197,200 in 2026. At 18.23% 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 Omaha-Council Bluffs-Fremont, NE-IA

$102,457

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #49 on the payslip, #15 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.