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Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV

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

Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 21.03% 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, 21.03%: + $18,224
Annual rate: $104,883

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

Paid #33, 19th in what it buys

+14Places gained once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$110,787at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $104,883. Local price level 94.7 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 Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV

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	27,333	28,250	29,159	30,064	30,970	31,502	32,401	33,306	33,344	34,189
GS-2	30,733	31,464	32,483	33,344	33,717	34,708	35,699	36,690	37,681	38,673
GS-3	33,535	34,653	35,772	36,890	38,008	39,127	40,245	41,363	42,482	43,600
GS-4	37,644	38,899	40,154	41,409	42,664	43,919	45,174	46,430	47,685	48,940
GS-5	42,117	43,521	44,925	46,329	47,733	49,137	50,541	51,945	53,349	54,753
GS-6	46,949	48,514	50,079	51,644	53,208	54,773	56,338	57,903	59,468	61,033
GS-7	52,171	53,910	55,650	57,389	59,128	60,867	62,606	64,346	66,085	67,824
GS-8	57,777	59,703	61,628	63,554	65,480	67,405	69,331	71,256	73,182	75,108
GS-9	63,815	65,943	68,071	70,199	72,326	74,454	76,582	78,709	80,837	82,965
GS-10	70,275	72,617	74,959	77,301	79,643	81,985	84,326	86,668	89,010	91,352
GS-11	77,211	79,785	82,360	84,934	87,508	90,083	92,657	95,231	97,806	100,380
GS-12	92,543	95,628	98,713	101,798	104,883	107,968	111,053	114,139	117,224	120,309
GS-13	110,047	113,715	117,383	121,052	124,720	128,389	132,057	135,725	139,394	143,062
GS-14	130,042	134,377	138,712	143,048	147,383	151,718	156,054	160,389	164,724	169,060
GS-15	152,963	158,062	163,161	168,260	173,359	178,458	183,557	188,656	193,755	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 #33 on the size of the paycheck but #19 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
Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV$110,787

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

Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS pays $1,785 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 7 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
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
20	Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Olean, NY	$106,079	95.8	$110,679
21	Corpus Christi-Kingsville-Alice, TX	$101,937	92.7	$109,999
22	San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA	$126,817	115.6	$109,691

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: Pittsburgh, New Castle and Weirton. They are not all in the same state, and that is the point worth taking away: the area crosses 3 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 18 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.

Pittsburgh
New Castle
Weirton

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 18 counties across 3 states (OH, PA, WV). Crossing a state line inside it does not change your pay; crossing out of it does.

Every county in this locality

18 places paid at this rate

Allegheny County, PA
Armstrong County, PA
Beaver County, PA
Butler County, PA
Cambria County, PA
Fayette County, PA
Greene County, PA
Indiana County, PA
Lawrence County, PA
Somerset County, PA
Washington County, PA
Westmoreland County, PA
Belmont County, OH
Jefferson County, OH
Brooke County, WV
Hancock County, WV
Marshall County, WV
Ohio County, WV

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 Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV in 2026 that percentage is 21.03%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $104,883 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 21.03% 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 Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV

$104,883

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #33 on the payslip, #19 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.