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Rest of U.S.

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

Rest of U.S. GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 17.06% 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, 17.06%: + $14,784
Annual rate: $101,443

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

Rank

—This area has no single published price index, so it is left out of the purchasing-power ranking rather than given an invented figure.

Locality adjustment

17.06%on top of the nationwide base table, for every grade and every step in this area.

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 Rest of U.S.

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	26,437	27,323	28,202	29,078	29,954	30,468	31,338	32,214	32,250	33,067
GS-2	29,725	30,432	31,418	32,250	32,611	33,569	34,528	35,487	36,445	37,404
GS-3	32,435	33,517	34,598	35,680	36,762	37,843	38,925	40,006	41,088	42,170
GS-4	36,409	37,623	38,837	40,051	41,265	42,479	43,693	44,907	46,120	47,334
GS-5	40,736	42,094	43,452	44,809	46,167	47,525	48,883	50,241	51,599	52,957
GS-6	45,409	46,922	48,436	49,950	51,463	52,977	54,490	56,004	57,517	59,031
GS-7	50,460	52,142	53,824	55,506	57,188	58,871	60,553	62,235	63,917	65,599
GS-8	55,882	57,745	59,607	61,469	63,332	65,194	67,057	68,919	70,781	72,644
GS-9	61,722	63,780	65,838	67,896	69,954	72,012	74,070	76,128	78,186	80,243
GS-10	67,970	70,235	72,500	74,765	77,030	79,295	81,560	83,825	86,091	88,356
GS-11	74,678	77,168	79,658	82,148	84,638	87,128	89,618	92,107	94,597	97,087
GS-12	89,508	92,491	95,475	98,459	101,443	104,427	107,411	110,395	113,378	116,362
GS-13	106,437	109,985	113,533	117,081	120,629	124,177	127,725	131,273	134,822	138,370
GS-14	125,776	129,969	134,162	138,356	142,549	146,742	150,935	155,128	159,321	163,514
GS-15	147,945	152,877	157,809	162,740	167,672	172,604	177,536	182,467	187,399	192,331

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. This area has no single metropolitan price index published for it, so the comparison in Exhibit 1 leaves it out rather than guessing.

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

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 17.06% this area stays clear of it, so every step increase is worth its full face value all the way to GS-15 step 10.

Which cities does this cover?

Every city in the United States that is not inside one of the 57 named locality pay areas. That includes plenty of substantial metropolitan areas: being a city is not the test, being a named locality pay area is. If your city is not on the list of 57, this is your rate.

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 is defined by exclusion: every duty station in the United States that does not fall inside one of the 57 named metropolitan areas is paid at this rate. It is the floor of the system and the lowest adjustment there is.

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 Rest of U.S. in 2026 that percentage is 17.06%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $101,443 at GS-12 step 5.

No General Schedule rate may exceed Level IV of the Executive Schedule, $197,200 in 2026. At 17.06% 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 Rest of U.S.

$101,443

This area has no published price level, so it carries no purchasing-power rank.

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.