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See your 2026 federal General Schedule salary — pick your grade, step, and locality pay area to get your annual, hourly, and biweekly pay, with the locality adjustment broken out.
Sources: OPM — 2026 GS salary tables, OPM — 2026 GS base table, OPM — within-grade increase waiting periods
Approximate, for orientation only. There is no official rank-to-GS conversion; your actual grade depends on the position and your experience/education.
GS-7 Step 1 · Rest of U.S.
January 2026 rates (1% General Schedule increase), sourced from OPM. Annual ÷ 2,087 = hourly. Does not include special-rate schedules, night/Sunday/hazard differentials, or law-enforcement (LEO) adjustments.
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Two numbers make up federal white-collar pay. The base rate comes from a nationwide table of 15 grades with 10 steps each, identical in every state. Locality pay is then added as a percentage on top, and that is the part that varies: about 17 percent in the Rest of U.S. area, and substantially more in the highest-cost metros.
So a GS-7 step 1 at a base of $43,106 becomes $50,460 once the Rest of U.S. adjustment of 17.06 percent is applied. Same grade, same step, different city, different salary. The 2026 tables carry a 1 percent General Schedule increase effective January 2026.
Base plus locality is capped by law at the Executive Schedule Level IV rate, $197,200 in 2026, under 5 U.S.C. 5304(g)(1). That cap only bites at the top of GS-15 in the most expensive localities.
The question everyone asks first is which GS grade their rank is worth, and the honest answer is that no official conversion exists. Federal vacancies are graded on the work, and you are rated against the specialised experience paragraph in the announcement rather than on your DD-214.
What actually moves the needle is veterans' preference, and writing the experience up in the form a federal HR specialist can rate. The KSA/CCAR builder exists for that. If the work is trades rather than office-based, the WG pay calculator covers the hourly Federal Wage System instead.
Your GS salary is the base rate for your grade and step, increased by your locality pay percentage. For example, a GS-7 Step 1 base of $43,106 in the "Rest of U.S." area (17.06%) works out to $50,460. Locality-adjusted pay is capped by law at the Executive Schedule Level IV rate ($197,200 in 2026).
The 2026 General Schedule incorporates a 1% across-the-board increase, effective January 2026, on top of locality pay.
GS (General Schedule) covers white-collar federal jobs and uses a nationwide grade/step table plus locality pay. WG (Wage Grade, the Federal Wage System) covers blue-collar/trades jobs and uses hourly schedules that vary by local wage area.
Take the base rate for your grade and step from the nationwide table, then add your locality percentage. The base table is the same everywhere in the country; locality is what makes a GS-12 in Washington DC paid differently from a GS-12 in rural Ohio. The calculator above does both halves, and shows the locality adjustment as its own line so you can see how much of your salary it is.
It depends entirely on step and locality, which is why a single national number does not exist. Each grade has ten steps, and the spread from step 1 to step 10 inside one grade is roughly 30 percent. Add a locality range that runs from about 17 percent in the Rest of U.S. area to well over 30 percent in the highest-cost cities and two people at the same grade can be tens of thousands apart. Pick your grade, step and locality above to get your figure rather than a range.
Every grade has ten steps. Steps 1 to 3 advance after one year each, steps 4 to 6 after two years each, and steps 7 to 9 after three years each, assuming acceptable performance. Getting from step 1 to step 10 within a grade therefore takes eighteen years, which is why promotion to a higher grade usually moves your pay far faster than waiting for steps.
There is no official conversion, and anyone who gives you a clean one is guessing. Federal hiring is based on the qualifications and experience the position requires, not on rank. As a rough orientation only, senior enlisted experience often maps to the GS-7 through GS-11 band and field-grade officer experience into GS-12 and above, but the actual grade comes from the vacancy announcement. Read the specialised experience paragraph in the announcement, because that is what an HR specialist will rate you against.