Federal announcements describe pay with a grade, GS-9, GS-12, GS-13, where a private employer would print a salary. As of Oct 6, 2026, advertised pay across the federal postings we hold that allow remote work or telework runs from $22,592 to $400,000 a year. Typical figure among them: $122,404. GS grades advertised: 1–15. Those figures are a count over live USAJOBS postings, refreshed daily, not an estimate. This guide explains the rules that produce them, then shows the live pay by tier, so you can read any grade on any announcement and estimate what it pays where you live.
What GS means
GS stands for General Schedule, the pay system that covers most federal civilian white-collar jobs. It has 15 grades, GS-1 through GS-15. Grade is a statement about the work, not the person: it reflects the difficulty, responsibility and qualifications a position requires, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) publishes classification standards that tell agencies which grade a given set of duties belongs to. Senior Executive Service positions sit above the General Schedule in a separate system.
The bands below are the usual pattern, not a rule:
- GS-5 to GS-7 are entry-level professional and administrative positions, commonly open to applicants with a bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
- GS-9 to GS-11 are early-career professional roles, where a master’s degree, a doctorate or a year of specialized experience at the grade below usually qualifies.
- GS-12 to GS-13 are the full-performance grades for most specialists and analysts, the level a career ladder typically ends at.
- GS-14 to GS-15 are senior, supervisory or highly specialized positions.
Above GS-5, qualifying for a grade generally means one year of specialized experience equivalent to the next lower grade, or education that OPM’s standards accept in its place at the lower grades. The announcement spells out which, under “Qualifications”.
Ten steps in every grade
Every GS grade has 10 steps, and each step is worth roughly 3 percent of the grade’s base pay. A new hire ordinarily starts at step 1. An agency can set pay above the minimum for superior qualifications or a special need, but it has to be approved before you start work, so raise it at the tentative offer, before you accept.
Movement through the steps is by within-grade increase, and it runs on a fixed clock as long as your performance is acceptable. Steps 2, 3 and 4 each follow 52 weeks at the step before; steps 5, 6 and 7 each follow 104 weeks; steps 8, 9 and 10 each follow 156 weeks. Reaching step 10 from step 1 therefore takes 18 years in the same grade. For most employees the faster route to higher pay is a promotion to the next grade, which the career ladder section below covers.
Locality pay, by duty station
The base GS table is not what a federal employee is paid. On top of it comes locality pay, a percentage adjustment for the pay area where the position’s official duty station sits. There are dozens of locality areas covering the major metropolitan regions, plus a “Rest of U.S.” rate for everywhere else. The lowest rate, Rest of U.S., adds more than 15 percent to base pay; the highest metropolitan areas add more than 40 percent. The same GS-12 step 1 is a materially different salary in San Francisco, Dallas and rural Montana.
Locality follows the duty station, and this is where remote positions differ. A telework-eligible job has a duty station at an agency office, and the locality is that office’s pay area even if you work from home some of the week. A fully remote job has no office duty station: your home is the official worksite, so the locality rate is the one for where you live. That is why remote announcements often publish a wide salary range or a note that pay will be set by the selectee’s location. If you live in a Rest of U.S. area, the lower end of that range is the one to expect. Pay is also capped: a GS-15 at the top steps in a high-locality area hits a statutory ceiling tied to the Executive Schedule, so the published maximum is not always paid in full.
What federal postings advertise right now
The live figures are the system above as agencies are actually using it. Fully remote federal postings we hold advertise pay from $36,409 to $400,000 a year, with a typical figure of $113,939. Telework-eligible federal postings advertise pay from $22,592 to $400,000, with a typical figure of $122,404. GS grades advertised on fully remote postings span 3–15; on telework-eligible postings, 1–15.
A word on “typical”. A federal announcement advertises a range rather than a single salary, so for each posting we take the midpoint of its advertised range, and the typical figure is the median of those midpoints across every posting in the tier. Hourly rates are converted at 2,087 hours, the standard federal work year, and postings that publish no usable pay figure are left out. The low and high ends are the edges advertised on any single posting, not what most applicants are offered. The grade range counts only postings on the GS ladder and its GG and GL variants, since other pay plans use grade numbers that mean something else. The remote vs. telework guide looks at why the two tiers can differ in pay and grade.
Reading a grade range on an announcement
Many announcements list a range such as GS-9/11/12. That is a career ladder: you are hired at the lowest grade and can be promoted through the others without competing again, as each year’s performance and the time-in-grade rule allow. Promotion to a higher grade generally requires 52 weeks at the grade below, so a GS-9/11/12 ladder means the full-performance GS-12 level is normally two years away, not two steps. The ladder is written into the announcement, so the promotion path is stated before you apply.
Where a range comes with a locality note, read the pay section rather than the headline. Some announcements print the salary for one locality and say pay will be adjusted for others; some print the full span from the lowest locality at step 1 to the highest at step 10. Every listing on this site shows the pay the agency advertised.
Estimating what a grade pays
- Note the grade, or the lowest grade of the ladder, on the announcement.
- Look up the current base GS table on OPM’s site. The table changes each January, which is why this guide does not reproduce it.
- Apply the locality percentage for the duty station, or for your home if the job is fully remote.
- Take step 1 as the realistic starting point unless you plan to negotiate a higher step.
Many announcements have done the arithmetic already. When a posting publishes a dollar range, trust it over your own calculation, since it reflects the locality and steps the agency is actually hiring for. Then turn to the benefits guide, because a GS salary carries a pension, a retirement match and health coverage that a private figure usually does not.
Pay systems that are not GS
Not every federal job uses the General Schedule. Blue-collar trades are paid under the Federal Wage System, with WG and related pay plans set by local wage surveys. Veterans Health Administration clinicians are paid under title 38 schedules. Parts of the Department of Defense, including laboratories and acquisition organizations, use demonstration pay systems with broad pay bands instead of grades. Some agencies have independent pay authority altogether, the Postal Service among them. If a posting shows a pay plan other than GS, or no grade at all, read its pay section directly; the grade mechanics above do not apply.
How to search for these
Start at the fully remote list, where every federal posting with no duty station appears with its advertised pay, grade and closing date, refreshed daily from USAJOBS; for a fully remote role, your own locality is the one that applies. If you can live near a federal office, the telework list adds every telework-eligible posting, each with its duty station, which fixes the locality. The entry-level listings page gathers postings at GS-7 and below, where the bands above matter most.
On USAJOBS itself, the search filters include grade and salary, and every listing on our site links to the original announcement, where the grade, the career ladder, the locality note and any special rate are spelled out. Read the pay section before the duties; it is the one more applicants misread.