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Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC

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

Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 18.8% 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, 18.8%: + $16,292
Annual rate: $102,951

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

Paid #45, 41st in what it buys

+4Places gained once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$105,115at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $102,951. Local price level 97.9 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 Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-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	26,830	27,729	28,621	29,510	30,400	30,921	31,804	32,693	32,729	33,559
GS-2	30,167	30,884	31,885	32,729	33,095	34,068	35,041	36,014	36,987	37,960
GS-3	32,917	34,015	35,113	36,210	37,308	38,406	39,503	40,601	41,699	42,797
GS-4	36,950	38,182	39,414	40,646	41,878	43,110	44,342	45,574	46,806	48,038
GS-5	41,341	42,719	44,097	45,475	46,854	48,232	49,610	50,988	52,366	53,744
GS-6	46,084	47,620	49,156	50,692	52,228	53,764	55,300	56,836	58,372	59,908
GS-7	51,210	52,917	54,624	56,331	58,039	59,746	61,453	63,160	64,867	66,574
GS-8	56,713	58,603	60,493	62,383	64,273	66,163	68,053	69,944	71,834	73,724
GS-9	62,640	64,728	66,817	68,905	70,994	73,082	75,171	77,259	79,348	81,436
GS-10	68,980	71,279	73,578	75,876	78,175	80,474	82,773	85,071	87,370	89,669
GS-11	75,788	78,315	80,842	83,369	85,896	88,423	90,950	93,477	96,003	98,530
GS-12	90,838	93,866	96,894	99,923	102,951	105,979	109,007	112,036	115,064	118,092
GS-13	108,019	111,620	115,221	118,821	122,422	126,023	129,624	133,225	136,826	140,426
GS-14	127,646	131,901	136,157	140,412	144,668	148,923	153,178	157,434	161,689	165,945
GS-15	150,144	155,149	160,154	165,159	170,164	175,169	180,174	185,180	190,185	195,190

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 — #45 on paper against #41 adjusted — so the 18.8% 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
Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC$105,115

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 18.8% 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

Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN pays $563 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 8 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
38	Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT-ME-VT	$114,893	108.3	$106,121
39	Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI	$110,594	104.8	$105,506
40	Sacramento-Roseville, CA-NV	$112,449	106.7	$105,418
41	Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC	$102,951	97.9	$105,115
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

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: Virginia Beach and Norfolk. 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: 27 counties in all, which is among the broader definitions in the system. Plenty of towns nobody would associate with Virginia Beach are paid at this rate. What decides it is the county your duty station sits in, and the full list is below.

Virginia Beach
Norfolk

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 27 counties across 2 states (NC, VA). Crossing a state line inside it does not change your pay; crossing out of it does.

Every county in this locality

27 places paid at this rate

Gloucester County, VA
Isle of Wight County, VA
James City County, VA
Mathews County, VA
Middlesex County, VA
Southampton County, VA
Surry County, VA
York County, VA
Chesapeake city, VA
Franklin city, VA
Hampton city, VA
Newport News city, VA
Norfolk city, VA
Poquoson city, VA
Portsmouth city, VA
Suffolk city, VA
Virginia Beach city, VA
Williamsburg city, VA
Camden County, NC
Chowan County, NC
Currituck County, NC
Dare County, NC
Gates County, NC
Hertford County, NC
Pasquotank County, NC
Perquimans County, NC
Tyrrell 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 Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC in 2026 that percentage is 18.8%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $102,951 at GS-12 step 5.

No General Schedule rate may exceed Level IV of the Executive Schedule, $197,200 in 2026. At 18.8% 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 Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC

$102,951

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #45 on the payslip, #41 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.