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Portland-Vancouver-Salem, OR-WA

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

Portland-Vancouver-Salem, OR-WA GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 26.13% 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, 26.13%: + $22,644
Annual rate: $109,303

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

Paid #18, 45th in what it buys

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

What it actually buys

$103,682at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $109,303. Local price level 105.4 against a national average of 100.

Ceiling watch

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

Every 2026 rate in Portland-Vancouver-Salem, OR-WA

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	28,485	29,440	30,387	31,331	32,275	32,829	33,766	34,710	34,749	35,629
GS-2	32,028	32,790	33,852	34,749	35,137	36,170	37,203	38,236	39,269	40,302
GS-3	34,948	36,114	37,279	38,444	39,610	40,775	41,941	43,106	44,272	45,437
GS-4	39,230	40,538	41,846	43,154	44,462	45,770	47,078	48,386	49,694	51,002
GS-5	43,892	45,355	46,818	48,281	49,744	51,208	52,671	54,134	55,597	57,060
GS-6	48,927	50,558	52,189	53,820	55,451	57,081	58,712	60,343	61,974	63,605
GS-7	54,370	56,182	57,995	59,807	61,620	63,432	65,245	67,057	68,870	70,682
GS-8	60,212	62,219	64,225	66,232	68,239	70,246	72,252	74,259	76,266	78,272
GS-9	66,505	68,722	70,939	73,157	75,374	77,591	79,809	82,026	84,243	86,461
GS-10	73,236	75,677	78,117	80,558	82,999	85,439	87,880	90,320	92,761	95,202
GS-11	80,465	83,147	85,830	88,513	91,196	93,879	96,561	99,244	101,927	104,610
GS-12	96,443	99,658	102,873	106,088	109,303	112,518	115,733	118,948	122,163	125,378
GS-13	114,684	118,507	122,330	126,153	129,976	133,799	137,622	141,445	145,268	149,091
GS-14	135,522	140,040	144,558	149,076	153,594	158,112	162,629	167,147	171,665	176,183
GS-15	159,408	164,722	170,036	175,350	180,664	185,977	191,291	196,605	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 #18 by the number on the paycheck and only #45 once local prices are counted — a 26.13% 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
Portland-Vancouver-Salem, OR-WA$103,682

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 2 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 9

Hits the ceiling here. The 1 step increase above it adds 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

Harrisburg-Lebanon, PA pays $5,806 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 29 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
42	Albany-Schenectady, NY-MA	$104,658	99.6	$105,114
43	Harrisburg-Lebanon, PA	$103,497	98.7	$104,913
44	Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA	$118,264	113.6	$104,137
45	Portland-Vancouver-Salem, OR-WA	$109,303	105.4	$103,682
46	San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA	$115,880	111.9	$103,569
47	Las Vegas-Henderson, NV-AZ	$103,618	100.2	$103,396
48	Colorado Springs, CO	$104,121	100.7	$103,390

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: Portland, Vancouver and Salem. 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 13 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.

Portland
Vancouver
Salem

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 13 counties across 2 states (OR, WA). Crossing a state line inside it does not change your pay; crossing out of it does.

Every county in this locality

13 places paid at this rate

Benton County, OR
Clackamas County, OR
Columbia County, OR
Linn County, OR
Marion County, OR
Multnomah County, OR
Polk County, OR
Washington County, OR
Yamhill County, OR
Clark County, WA
Cowlitz County, WA
Skamania County, WA
Wahkiakum County, WA

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 Portland-Vancouver-Salem, OR-WA in 2026 that percentage is 26.13%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $109,303 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 26.13% over base, that ceiling is reached inside the published table: 2 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 Portland-Vancouver-Salem, OR-WA

$109,303

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #18 on the payslip, #45 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.