- GS pay scale 2026
- States
- States with no locality pay area
58 locality pay areasPage last changed 2026-10-07
The 8 states with no named locality pay area
Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming contain no designated locality pay area: in OPM’s 2026 definitions not one of their counties belongs to a named area, so every federal duty station in them is paid the Rest of U.S. rate, and moving within those states does not change federal pay.
States affected
8of the 50 states; the District of Columbia is in the Washington, DC area.The rate everywhere in them
$101,443for a GS-12 step 5 in 2026, at 17.06% above the nationwide base table.- Arkansas
- Louisiana
- Mississippi
- Montana
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Utah
- Wyoming
Why one page and not eight
The answer is the same for all of them.
In these states there is one rate, one table and no county that changes either, so one page covers them all.
What being outside every named area means
Rest of U.S. is the rate for every federal duty station outside the 57 named areas, and the lowest locality rate.
Being outside a named area is not a statement about how rural a place is: Rest of U.S. covers many cities. Locality pay areas are defined by the President’s Pay Agent (5 U.S.C. 5304(f)(1)), on the recommendation of the Federal Salary Council and by its criteria, not by population.
Inside these 8 states a move for a federal job changes the commute and the rent but not the federal salary: a GS-12 step 5 is paid $101,443 in every county of every one of them.
A low percentage does not mean a low standard of living. Locality pay is set from what private employers in a region pay, not from what living there costs, so an area with a modest percentage in a place where things are cheap can leave you better off than a high percentage in an expensive one. On the national ranking, sorted by what the salary buys, several low-percentage areas finish near the top.
Could that change?
Yes. The Pay Agent adds areas from time to time, usually on the council’s recommendation.
The Federal Salary Council reviews Rest of U.S. research areas against its criteria and recommends additions; the Pay Agent decides, and the process has taken years. A duty station in a county that joins a new area is then paid that area’s percentage instead of the Rest of U.S. one, with no promotion or step increase involved.
OPM published tables for 47 areas in 2016, 53 in 2019, 54 in 2021 and 58 from 2024. This site reads the list of areas from OPM’s tables on every build.
Where to look next
The Rest of U.S. page has the full table: all 15 grades, all 10 steps, and what each rate is worth against national average prices. The source is OPM’s own Salary Table 2026-RUS.
If you are weighing a job in one of these states against one elsewhere, the comparison tool puts Rest of U.S. against every named area and works out how cheap a place would have to be for the lower rate to come out ahead. For a specific grade and step in a specific place, the calculator will find the area from a ZIP code.
Named areas do cross state lines elsewhere — the states page lists every state with the areas that reach into it — but none reaches into these states: no county of theirs is on the county list of any of the 57 named areas, and no installation in them is assigned to one by name.