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Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC

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

Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 22.24% 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, 22.24%: + $19,273
Annual rate: $105,932

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

Paid #25, 28th in what it buys

−3Places lost once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$107,921at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $105,932. Local price level 98.2 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 Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC

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	27,607	28,532	29,450	30,364	31,280	31,817	32,725	33,639	33,677	34,530
GS-2	31,040	31,779	32,808	33,677	34,054	35,055	36,056	37,057	38,058	39,059
GS-3	33,870	35,000	36,129	37,259	38,388	39,518	40,647	41,777	42,906	44,036
GS-4	38,020	39,288	40,556	41,823	43,091	44,358	45,626	46,894	48,161	49,429
GS-5	42,538	43,956	45,374	46,792	48,210	49,628	51,046	52,464	53,882	55,300
GS-6	47,418	48,999	50,579	52,160	53,740	55,321	56,901	58,482	60,063	61,643
GS-7	52,693	54,449	56,206	57,963	59,719	61,476	63,232	64,989	66,745	68,502
GS-8	58,355	60,300	62,245	64,189	66,134	68,079	70,024	71,969	73,914	75,858
GS-9	64,453	66,602	68,751	70,900	73,049	75,198	77,347	79,496	81,645	83,794
GS-10	70,977	73,343	75,708	78,073	80,439	82,804	85,169	87,535	89,900	92,266
GS-11	77,983	80,583	83,183	85,783	88,383	90,983	93,583	96,183	98,783	101,383
GS-12	93,468	96,584	99,700	102,816	105,932	109,048	112,164	115,280	118,396	121,511
GS-13	111,147	114,852	118,557	122,262	125,967	129,672	133,377	137,082	140,787	144,493
GS-14	131,342	135,721	140,099	144,478	148,857	153,235	157,614	161,992	166,371	170,750
GS-15	154,492	159,642	164,792	169,942	175,092	180,242	185,392	190,542	195,692	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 two rankings sit close together — #25 on paper against #28 adjusted — so the 22.24% figure is a reasonable guide to what the job is worth. That is not true everywhere, which is what Exhibit 1 shows.

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
Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC$107,921

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

San Antonio-New Braunfels-Pearsall, TX pays $2,998 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 16 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
25	Philadelphia-Reading-Camden, PA-NJ-DE-MD	$111,781	102.6	$108,997
26	San Antonio-New Braunfels-Pearsall, TX	$102,934	94.7	$108,676
27	Richmond, VA	$105,967	97.9	$108,286
28	Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC	$105,932	98.2	$107,921
29	Albuquerque-Santa Fe-Las Vegas, NM	$102,544	95.5	$107,324
30	Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN	$102,388	95.7	$106,993
31	Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK	$110,282	103.1	$106,976

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after three principal cities: Raleigh, Durham and Cary. All three are paid from the same table at the same percentage, which surprises people who assume the largest of the three commands more than the others. Size of city has nothing to do with it; the area is one unit.

The area reaches far beyond those city limits: 24 counties in all, which is among the broader definitions in the system. Plenty of towns nobody would associate with Raleigh are paid at this rate. What decides it is the county your duty station sits in, and the full list is below.

Raleigh
Durham
Cary

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

Every county in this locality

24 places paid at this rate

Caswell County, NC
Chatham County, NC
Cumberland County, NC
Durham County, NC
Edgecombe County, NC
Franklin County, NC
Granville County, NC
Halifax County, NC
Harnett County, NC
Hoke County, NC
Johnston County, NC
Lee County, NC
Moore County, NC
Nash County, NC
Northampton County, NC
Orange County, NC
Person County, NC
Robeson County, NC
Scotland County, NC
Vance County, NC
Wake County, NC
Warren County, NC
Wayne County, NC
Wilson County, NC

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 Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC in 2026 that percentage is 22.24%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $105,932 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 22.24% 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 Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC

$105,932

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #25 on the payslip, #28 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.