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Spokane-Spokane Valley-Coeur d'Alene, WA-ID

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

Spokane-Spokane Valley-Coeur d'Alene, WA-ID GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 17.67% 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, 17.67%: + $15,313
Annual rate: $101,972

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

Paid #54, 53rd in what it buys

+1Places gained once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$101,620at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $101,972. Local price level 100.3 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 Spokane-Spokane Valley-Coeur d'Alene, WA-ID

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	26,575	27,465	28,349	29,229	30,111	30,627	31,501	32,382	32,418	33,239
GS-2	29,880	30,591	31,581	32,418	32,781	33,744	34,708	35,672	36,635	37,599
GS-3	32,604	33,691	34,779	35,866	36,953	38,040	39,128	40,215	41,302	42,389
GS-4	36,599	37,819	39,039	40,260	41,480	42,700	43,920	45,141	46,361	47,581
GS-5	40,948	42,313	43,678	45,043	46,408	47,773	49,138	50,503	51,868	53,233
GS-6	45,645	47,167	48,688	50,210	51,731	53,253	54,774	56,296	57,817	59,339
GS-7	50,723	52,414	54,105	55,796	57,487	59,177	60,868	62,559	64,250	65,941
GS-8	56,173	58,045	59,918	61,790	63,662	65,534	67,406	69,278	71,150	73,022
GS-9	62,044	64,112	66,181	68,250	70,318	72,387	74,456	76,524	78,593	80,662
GS-10	68,324	70,601	72,878	75,155	77,432	79,708	81,985	84,262	86,539	88,816
GS-11	75,068	77,570	80,073	82,576	85,079	87,582	90,085	92,587	95,090	97,593
GS-12	89,974	92,973	95,973	98,972	101,972	104,971	107,970	110,970	113,969	116,969
GS-13	106,991	110,558	114,125	117,691	121,258	124,824	128,391	131,957	135,524	139,091
GS-14	126,432	130,647	134,862	139,077	143,291	147,506	151,721	155,936	160,151	164,366
GS-15	148,716	153,673	158,631	163,588	168,546	173,503	178,461	183,418	188,376	193,333

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 — #54 on paper against #53 adjusted — so the 17.67% 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
Spokane-Spokane Valley-Coeur d'Alene, WA-ID$101,620

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 17.67% 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

Corpus Christi-Kingsville-Alice, TX pays $35 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 1 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
50	Seattle-Tacoma, WA	$114,017	111.1	$102,595
51	Burlington-South Burlington-Barre, VT	$103,514	100.9	$102,541
52	Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL	$102,197	100.0	$102,192
53	Spokane-Spokane Valley-Coeur d'Alene, WA-ID	$101,972	100.3	$101,620
54	Reno-Fernley, NV	$101,842	101.0	$100,820
55	Fresno-Madera-Hanford, CA	$101,954	102.2	$99,800
56	State of Hawaii	$105,906	110.0	$96,321

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: Spokane, Spokane Valley and Coeur d'Alene. 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 8 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.

Spokane
Spokane Valley
Coeur d'Alene

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

Every county in this locality

8 places paid at this rate

Ferry County, WA
Lincoln County, WA
Pend Oreille County, WA
Spokane County, WA
Stevens County, WA
Benewah County, ID
Kootenai County, ID
Shoshone County, ID

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 Spokane-Spokane Valley-Coeur d'Alene, WA-ID in 2026 that percentage is 17.67%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $101,972 at GS-12 step 5.

No General Schedule rate may exceed Level IV of the Executive Schedule, $197,200 in 2026. At 17.67% 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 Spokane-Spokane Valley-Coeur d'Alene, WA-ID

$101,972

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #54 on the payslip, #53 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.