Federal locality pay is a percentage added to your base General Schedule salary based on where your official duty station sits, and for 2026 it ranges from 17.06% in the Rest of U.S. area to 46.34% in the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland area. The adjustment applies automatically to GS employees, so you don’t apply for it, and the percentage is set by your worksite rather than your home address. There are 58 locality pay areas in 2026, and every GS position falls into exactly one of them.
Who Gets Locality Pay
If you’re paid under the General Schedule, you receive locality pay automatically. No application, no request, no paperwork on your end. Certain law enforcement officers on separate pay schedules also receive locality adjustments under the same framework.1U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Salaries and Wages
Some positions carry “special rates” instead, used for hard-to-fill occupations like certain IT and medical jobs where even locality-adjusted pay isn’t competitive. If you qualify for both a special rate and locality pay, you get whichever is higher. The two don’t stack.
Two big groups of federal employees are outside the locality pay system entirely. Federal Wage System (blue-collar) employees are paid hourly from local private-sector wage surveys, with the geographic adjustment baked directly into the rate.2U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Federal Wage System Senior Executive Service members are on a performance-based system with no locality component, earning the same base salary regardless of location.3U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Compensation
How the Calculation Works
The math is simple. Take your base GS rate for your grade and step, multiply by the locality percentage, and add that result to the base. Consider a GS-12, Step 1 with a 2026 base of $72,553 working in the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington area at 33.94%. The locality portion is $72,553 × 0.3394 = $24,621, giving a total salary of $97,174. That adjusted figure is what actually appears in your pay.4U.S. Office of Personnel Management. General Schedule
For January 2026, base GS pay went up 1%. Locality percentages themselves were frozen at 2025 levels under an Alternative Pay Plan issued by the President, so the 2026 percentages match 2025 but apply to the updated base table.5U.S. Office of Personnel Management. 2026 Special Rates for Certain Law Enforcement Personnel
A few representative 2026 rates:
- San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA: 46.34%
- New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT-PA: 37.95%
- Houston-The Woodlands, TX: 35.00%
- Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA: 33.94%
- Rest of United States: 17.06%
The 2026 base GS scale runs from $22,584 for a GS-1, Step 1 to $164,301 for a GS-15, Step 10 before any locality adjustment.6U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Salary Table 2026-GS
Which Locality Rate You Get
Your rate is set by your official worksite, not your home. Someone commuting from a small town into the D.C. metro area gets the D.C.-area rate because that’s where the position of record sits.7eCFR. 5 CFR Part 531 Subpart F Some named areas cover wide geography. Washington-Baltimore-Arlington stretches across parts of D.C., Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. If your duty station is in any county listed under that definition, you get the full rate.
Telework
If you have a telework agreement and report to the agency worksite at least twice per biweekly pay period, your official worksite stays the agency office, and you keep that locality rate. Agencies can grant temporary exceptions for medical recovery, emergencies, or extended approved leave. If a teleworker stops meeting the twice-per-pay-period rule on a non-temporary basis, the official worksite shifts to the telework location, and locality pay adjusts.8eCFR. 5 CFR 531.605
Fully Remote
A remote worker whose approved work location is home gets the rate for wherever that home is. If you’re remote in rural Montana, you get the 17.06% Rest of U.S. rate rather than the rate for your agency’s headquarters. Depending on the metro area your agency sits in, that difference can run into thousands of dollars a year.
Travel and Details
Temporary duty travel doesn’t change your locality pay. If your duty station is Denver and you spend two weeks training in San Francisco, you keep the Denver rate. The same goes for short details. The exception is an extended assignment where the agency authorizes relocation expenses for a temporary change of station; then the new location becomes the official worksite for the duration.9U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Official Worksite for Location-Based Pay Purposes
Reassignment
For a permanent reassignment or transfer, your locality pay simply switches to the new area’s rate on the effective date. Moving from Rest of U.S. (17.06%) to the D.C. area (33.94%) is an immediate raise. The reverse move is an immediate cut.
Pay Caps That Can Override the Calculation
Two ceilings limit what locality pay can actually deliver.
The first is the Level IV Executive Schedule cap. No matter how high the locality percentage climbs, your total locality-adjusted GS salary cannot exceed Level IV, which is $197,200 for 2026.10U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Salary Table 2026-EX A GS-15, Step 10 in San Francisco would calculate to $240,421 at 46.34%, but the actual paycheck tops out at $197,200.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 5304 When the cap bites, an annual locality bump often produces no effective raise. Certain positions with certified performance appraisal systems qualify for a higher Level III or Level II ceiling, but most GS employees hit Level IV.
The second is the aggregate pay limit. Basic pay, locality pay, bonuses, awards, overtime, and other Title 5 cash payments combined can’t exceed Level I of the Executive Schedule, which is $253,100 for 2026, measured at year-end.12eCFR. 5 CFR 530.203 Anything over gets paid as a lump sum in January, subject to the new year’s limit.
What Locality Pay Affects Beyond Your Paycheck
Retirement
Locality pay counts toward your “high-3” average salary, the figure used for both FERS and CSRS annuities. Because the high-3 is typically your last three years of service, the locality rate at your final duty station has a lasting effect on your retirement check. Moving from a high-cost area to a lower one shortly before retirement permanently reduces the annuity.13U.S. Office of Personnel Management. FERS Computation
Life Insurance
FEGLI Basic coverage is based on your annual rate of basic pay, which includes the locality adjustment. The Basic Insurance Amount equals your locality-adjusted salary rounded up to the next $1,000, plus $2,000. A higher locality rate produces a slightly higher Basic benefit.
Overtime
Locality pay is factored into overtime under Title 5. For employees earning at or below the GS-10 minimum rate (including locality pay), overtime is paid at one and a half times the hourly rate. Above that threshold, overtime equals the greater of one and a half times the GS-10 minimum hourly rate or the employee’s own hourly rate. Higher-graded employees often earn overtime at less than time-and-a-half of their own salary.14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 5542
Alaska, Hawaii, and the Territories
Before 2010, federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii, and U.S. territories received a non-foreign cost-of-living allowance (COLA) instead of locality pay. The Nonforeign Area Retirement Equity Assurance Act of 2009 transitioned these areas onto the locality pay system.15U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Nonforeign Areas That mattered because COLA had never counted toward retirement, and locality pay does.
A reduced COLA still exists where the cost of living outpaces the locality adjustment. The remaining rate is calculated by offsetting it against 65% of the applicable locality percentage.16Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 5941 For 2026, remaining COLA rates run from 1.49% in most of Alaska to 11.88% in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam. The residual COLA is not retirement-eligible; the locality portion is.
Finding Your Exact Rate
OPM publishes a full salary table for every locality pay area each year on its Salaries and Wages page.1U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Salaries and Wages Find the table for your duty station’s area, then look up the intersection of your grade (rows) and step (columns). That number is your full annual salary with locality included.
If you’re not sure which area your duty station falls under, the OPM locality pay area definitions page lists every county assigned to each named area. Any county not listed under a named area is in the Rest of U.S. category.17U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Locality Pay Area Definitions These definitions can change from year to year as metropolitan areas grow, though 2026 kept the same boundaries as 2025.