2026 GS Locality Pay, Ranked: Where Federal Employees Earn the Most (and Least)
All 58 federal locality pay areas ranked for 2026, from San Francisco's 46.34% to Rest of U.S. at 17.06% — and what the spread means in dollars at GS-7, GS-13 and GS-15.
Every January the Office of Personnel Management publishes a new General Schedule table, and every January the same question comes up in federal-employee forums: where does a GS job actually pay the most? The base table is national. What changes your paycheck is the locality payment — a percentage added on top of base pay that ranges, in 2026, from 17.06% in "Rest of U.S." to 46.34% in the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland area.
This piece ranks all 58 locality areas for 2026 and converts the percentages into dollars at the grades people actually search for. Every figure is computed from OPM's 2026 tables using OPM's own formula — base × (1 + locality %), rounded to the dollar, capped at Executive Schedule Level IV ($197,200). You can check any cell against the full locality tables on this site.
The 2026 top ten
| Rank | Locality pay area | Locality % | GS-13 step 1 | GS-13 step 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA | 46.34% | $133,060 | $172,980 |
| 2 | New York–Newark, NY-NJ-CT-PA | 37.95% | $125,431 | $163,062 |
| 3 | Los Angeles–Long Beach, CA | 36.47% | $124,085 | $161,313 |
| 4 | Houston–The Woodlands, TX | 35.00% | $122,749 | $159,575 |
| 5 | Washington–Baltimore–Arlington | 33.94% | $121,785 | $158,322 |
| 6 | San Diego–Chula Vista–Carlsbad, CA | 33.72% | $121,585 | $158,062 |
| 7 | Boston–Worcester–Providence | 32.58% | $120,548 | $156,715 |
| 8 | State of Alaska | 32.36% | $120,348 | $156,455 |
| 9 | Hartford–East Hartford, CT-MA | 32.08% | $120,094 | $156,124 |
| 10 | Seattle–Tacoma, WA | 31.57% | $119,630 | $155,521 |
Two things surprise people in this list. Houston at #4 — above Washington DC — surprises most people; locality percentages are derived from surveys of non-federal pay in each area, and Houston's has sat among the highest for years. And Alaska at #8 is a whole-state area, so a GS employee in Fairbanks receives the same 32.36% as one in Anchorage.
The bottom of the table
| Locality pay area | Locality % | GS-13 step 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Rest of U.S. | 17.06% | $106,437 |
| Reno–Fernley, NV | 17.52% | $106,855 |
| Corpus Christi–Kingsville–Alice, TX | 17.63% | $106,955 |
| Fresno–Madera–Hanford, CA | 17.65% | $106,973 |
| Spokane–Spokane Valley–Coeur d'Alene | 17.67% | $106,991 |
| Rochester–Batavia–Seneca Falls, NY | 17.88% | $107,182 |
| Palm Bay–Melbourne–Titusville, FL | 17.93% | $107,228 |
| Des Moines–Ames–West Des Moines, IA | 18.01% | $107,301 |
Note how compressed the bottom is: seven named metros sit within one percentage point of Rest of U.S. Being carved out as a separate locality area is worth surprisingly little in the lower half of the table.
What the spread is worth in dollars
The headline gap between the top and bottom areas is 29.28 percentage points. In dollars, at 2026 rates:
- GS-7 step 1 (a typical entry professional grade): $50,460 in Rest of U.S. vs $63,081 in San Francisco — a $12,621 difference.
- GS-13 step 1: $106,437 vs $133,060 — $26,623.
- GS-13 step 10: $138,370 vs $172,980 — $34,610.
The gap grows with grade because locality pay is a percentage. That is the single most important thing to understand about the GS system when comparing offers: a high-locality posting is worth more the more senior you are.
The ceiling most people don't know about
Locality pay cannot push total pay above Executive Schedule Level IV — $197,200 in 2026 (5 U.S.C. 5304(g)(1)). In high-locality areas this cap bites well before step 10 of GS-15:
| Area | GS-15 capped from |
|---|---|
| San Francisco | step 3 |
| New York | step 5 |
| Washington DC, Los Angeles, Houston | step 6 |
| Seattle, Boston | step 7 |
Uncapped, a GS-15 step 10 in San Francisco would compute to $240,438. The employee receives $197,200. In effect, the top of the General Schedule is flat across the country's most expensive cities — which is one reason senior federal technologists and attorneys in those markets leave for the private sector, and why agencies rely on special rate tables and SES positions to retain them.
How to use this
If you are comparing two federal postings, look up both localities on the 2026 GS pay scale and compare the specific grade and step, not the percentages. If you are comparing a federal offer to a private-sector one, the comparison you want is the locality-adjusted GS figure against the BLS metro median for your occupation in that same city — for example accountants in Houston, which is a directly measured figure. We only show that comparison where a published government measurement exists for the private-sector side; where it doesn't, we say so.
Source: OPM Salary Table 2026-GS and the 2026 locality pay tables. Locality percentages verified against each published table; figures computed per OPM's method and checked against published GS-13 values for seven areas.
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