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St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL

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

St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 20.03% 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, 20.03%: + $17,358
Annual rate: $104,017

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

Paid #37, 4th in what it buys

+33Places gained once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$118,596at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $104,017. Local price level 87.7 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 St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL

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	27,108	28,016	28,918	29,815	30,714	31,241	32,133	33,031	33,068	33,906
GS-2	30,479	31,204	32,215	33,068	33,438	34,421	35,404	36,387	37,370	38,353
GS-3	33,258	34,367	35,476	36,585	37,694	38,803	39,912	41,021	42,131	43,240
GS-4	37,333	38,578	39,822	41,067	42,312	43,556	44,801	46,046	47,291	48,535
GS-5	41,769	43,162	44,554	45,946	47,339	48,731	50,123	51,516	52,908	54,300
GS-6	46,561	48,113	49,665	51,217	52,769	54,321	55,873	57,425	58,977	60,529
GS-7	51,740	53,465	55,190	56,915	58,639	60,364	62,089	63,814	65,539	67,264
GS-8	57,300	59,210	61,119	63,029	64,939	66,848	68,758	70,668	72,577	74,487
GS-9	63,288	65,398	67,508	69,619	71,729	73,839	75,949	78,059	80,169	82,279
GS-10	69,694	72,017	74,339	76,662	78,985	81,307	83,630	85,952	88,275	90,597
GS-11	76,573	79,126	81,679	84,232	86,785	89,338	91,891	94,444	96,997	99,550
GS-12	91,779	94,838	97,898	100,957	104,017	107,076	110,136	113,195	116,255	119,315
GS-13	109,137	112,775	116,413	120,052	123,690	127,328	130,966	134,604	138,242	141,880
GS-14	128,967	133,267	137,566	141,866	146,165	150,465	154,764	159,064	163,363	167,663
GS-15	151,699	156,756	161,812	166,869	171,926	176,983	182,040	187,097	192,154	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 #37 on the size of the paycheck but #4 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

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

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
1	Laredo, TX	$105,369	87.0	$121,175
2	Huntsville-Decatur, AL-TN	$105,646	87.2	$121,137
3	Houston-The Woodlands, TX	$116,990	98.6	$118,616
4	St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL	$104,017	87.7	$118,596
5	Columbus-Marion-Zanesville, OH	$105,854	89.3	$118,543
6	Davenport-Moline, IA-IL	$103,064	89.1	$115,700
7	Atlanta--Athens-Clarke County--Sandy Springs, GA-AL	$107,275	93.3	$114,926

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: St. Louis, St. Charles and Farmington. 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.

The area reaches far beyond those city limits: 30 counties in all, which is among the broader definitions in the system. Plenty of towns nobody would associate with St. Louis are paid at this rate. What decides it is the county your duty station sits in, and the full list is below.

St. Louis
St. Charles
Farmington

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 30 counties across 2 states (IL, MO). Crossing a state line inside it does not change your pay; crossing out of it does.

Every county in this locality

30 places paid at this rate

Crawford County, MO
Franklin County, MO
Gasconade County, MO
Iron County, MO
Jefferson County, MO
Lincoln County, MO
Madison County, MO
Montgomery County, MO
Pike County, MO
St. Charles County, MO
Ste. Genevieve County, MO
St. Francois County, MO
St. Louis County, MO
Warren County, MO
Washington County, MO
St. Louis city, MO
Bond County, IL
Calhoun County, IL
Clinton County, IL
Fayette County, IL
Greene County, IL
Jersey County, IL
Macoupin County, IL
Madison County, IL
Marion County, IL
Monroe County, IL
Montgomery County, IL
Randolph County, IL
St. Clair County, IL
Washington County, IL

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 St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL in 2026 that percentage is 20.03%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $104,017 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 20.03% 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 St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL

$104,017

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #37 on the payslip, #4 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.