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Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT-ME-VT

2026 editionEffective January 202658 locality pay areasData last changed 2026-08-25

Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT-ME-VT GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 32.58% adjustment is actually worth once local prices are counted, and which cells stop growing because they hit the statutory ceiling.

How the number is assembled

Base rate before locality: $86,659
Locality pay, 32.58%: + $28,234
Annual rate: $114,893

Biweekly is the hourly rate times 80, the way OPM derives it — not the annual rate divided by 26.

Paid #7, 38th in what it buys

−31Places lost once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$106,121at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $114,893. Local price level 108.3 against a national average of 100.

Ceiling watch

4 of 150cells are pinned to the $197,200 statutory ceiling. Inside that band a step increase adds nothing.

Every 2026 rate in Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT-ME-VT

All 150 cells, read from the published OPM table. Click any cell and the bar at the top of the page moves onto it — or use the arrow keys once a cell is selected.

Annual rates in U.S. dollars, read cell by cell from the published OPM table rather than calculated. The cell marked ◀ is GS-12 step 5, the one quoted at the top of this page. Cells marked ▲ have been cut down to the statutory ceiling of $197,200 — the printed number is lower than the formula would give.

Grade	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
GS-1	29,942	30,945	31,941	32,933	33,926	34,508	35,493	36,485	36,526	37,451
GS-2	33,666	34,467	35,583	36,526	36,934	38,020	39,106	40,192	41,277	42,363
GS-3	36,735	37,960	39,185	40,410	41,635	42,860	44,086	45,311	46,536	47,761
GS-4	41,236	42,611	43,986	45,361	46,736	48,111	49,485	50,860	52,235	53,610
GS-5	46,137	47,674	49,212	50,750	52,288	53,826	55,364	56,902	58,440	59,978
GS-6	51,429	53,143	54,858	56,572	58,286	60,000	61,715	63,429	65,143	66,857
GS-7	57,150	59,055	60,960	62,865	64,771	66,676	68,581	70,486	72,391	74,297
GS-8	63,291	65,400	67,510	69,619	71,728	73,838	75,947	78,056	80,166	82,275
GS-9	69,905	72,236	74,567	76,898	79,228	81,559	83,890	86,221	88,552	90,882
GS-10	76,981	79,547	82,112	84,678	87,243	89,808	92,374	94,939	97,505	100,070
GS-11	84,579	87,399	90,219	93,039	95,859	98,679	101,499	104,319	107,139	109,959
GS-12	101,375	104,754	108,134	111,513	114,893	118,272	121,651	125,031	128,410	131,790
GS-13	120,548	124,567	128,585	132,604	136,622	140,641	144,659	148,678	152,696	156,715
GS-14	142,452	147,201	151,950	156,699	161,448	166,197	170,946	175,695	180,444	185,193
GS-15	167,560	173,146	178,731	184,317	189,902	195,488	197,200	197,200	197,200	197,200

Source: OPM 2026 General Schedule salary tables. Every cell on this page was independently recomputed from the base table and the locality percentage and matched the published figure to the dollar.

Is that a lot? Not until you count local prices

Read this before the number. Locality pay is calculated from what private employers in the same region pay for comparable work. It is not a cost-of-living adjustment, and OPM says so in as many words. Here the distinction matters a great deal. The area ranks #7 by the number on the paycheck and only #38 once local prices are counted — a 32.58% adjustment that a high cost base takes back.

Exhibit 1 · nobody else publishes this

GS-12 step 5, after local prices

Each bar is the 2026 salary divided by that area's price level, so the bars are comparable in what they actually buy. Longer is better. Price levels are BEA Regional Price Parities for 2024, where the U.S. average is 100.

Laredo, TX$121,175
Huntsville-Decatur, AL-TN$121,137
Houston-The Woodlands, TX$118,616
St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL$118,596
Columbus-Marion-Zanesville, OH$118,543
Davenport-Moline, IA-IL$115,700
Atlanta--Athens-Clarke County--Sandy Springs, GA-AL$114,926
Dayton-Springfield-Kettering, OH$113,514
Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT-ME-VT$106,121

Highest on paper: San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA at $126,817. Highest in what it buys: Laredo, TX at $121,175 of purchasing power from a salary of $105,369. Sources: OPM 2026 salary tables; BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. Price data lags the pay tables, and metropolitan boundaries do not match locality boundaries exactly — the nearest metropolitan area is used as the proxy.

Where raises stop being raises

In this locality 4 of the 150 cells are pinned to the $197,200 ceiling. Inside that band a step increase is worth nothing at all: the formula produces a bigger number, the law cuts it back, and the payslip does not move.

GS-15

Step 7

Hits the ceiling here. The 3 step increases above it add nothing.

This matters most when comparing job offers. Two identical grades in two localities can look like a clear win on paper while the higher-paid one has already run out of room to grow.

What is next to it

Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX pays $10,599 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 33 such areas above this one.

These are the localities immediately around this one once local prices are taken into account. The middle column is the price level, where 100 is the national average — lower is cheaper. Prices are shown to one decimal place; the adjusted figures are computed from the published index, which carries three.

#	Locality	On paper	Prices	What it buys
35	Charlotte-Concord, NC-SC	$103,705	97.3	$106,530
36	Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX	$104,294	98.1	$106,351
37	New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT-PA	$119,546	112.6	$106,204
38	Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT-ME-VT	$114,893	108.3	$106,121
39	Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI	$110,594	104.8	$105,506
40	Sacramento-Roseville, CA-NV	$112,449	106.7	$105,418
41	Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC	$102,951	97.9	$105,115

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: Boston, Worcester and Providence. They are not all in the same state, and that is the point worth taking away: the area crosses 6 state lines and pays the same percentage on both sides of every one of them. A state border is not a pay border.

The area reaches far beyond those city limits: 31 counties in all, which is among the broader definitions in the system. Plenty of towns nobody would associate with Boston are paid at this rate. What decides it is the county your duty station sits in, and the full list is below.

Boston
Worcester
Providence

Am I actually in this locality?

Locality is decided by your duty station — the place you physically report to — not by where you live and not by where your agency is headquartered. If you report to a building in one county and live in the next one over, the building decides your pay. Telework arrangements have their own rules and can change which locality applies, so confirm with your HR office rather than assuming.

This locality covers 31 counties across 6 states (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT). Crossing a state line inside it does not change your pay; crossing out of it does.

Every county in this locality

31 places paid at this rate

Barnstable County, MA
Bristol County, MA
Dukes County, MA
Essex County, MA
Middlesex County, MA
Nantucket County, MA
Norfolk County, MA
Plymouth County, MA
Suffolk County, MA
Worcester County, MA
Bristol County, RI
Kent County, RI
Newport County, RI
Providence County, RI
Washington County, RI
Belknap County, NH
Carroll County, NH
Cheshire County, NH
Grafton County, NH
Hillsborough County, NH
Merrimack County, NH
Rockingham County, NH
Strafford County, NH
Sullivan County, NH
Windham County, CT
Androscoggin County, ME
Cumberland County, ME
Sagadahoc County, ME
York County, ME
Orange County, VT
Windsor County, VT

Source: OPM 2026 locality pay area definitions. FIPS codes are omitted here for readability. Military installations that OPM assigns to a different locality than the county around them are listed separately and are not shown in this list.

How the number is built

Every General Schedule grade has ten steps. The base rate comes from the nationwide table, and the locality percentage is applied on top of it. For Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT-ME-VT in 2026 that percentage is 32.58%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $114,893 at GS-12 step 5.

No General Schedule rate may exceed Level IV of the Executive Schedule, $197,200 in 2026. Because this locality pays 32.58% over base, that ceiling is reached inside the published table: 4 of the 150 cells here are printed at the cap rather than at what the formula produces.

The percentage is applied to the base rate, the result is rounded, and only then is it checked against the ceiling — in that order. Doing it the other way round produces different numbers at the top of the schedule, which is one reason published figures sometimes disagree. Every cell here was recomputed independently and matched the OPM table to the dollar.

Work out a different grade and step

GS-12, step 5 in Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT-ME-VT

$114,893

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #7 on the payslip, #38 once local prices are counted.

Grade

Step

Starting your first federal job? A first appointment is set at step 1 of the grade unless the agency uses the superior qualifications authority (5 U.S.C. 5333; 5 CFR 531.212). The step above defaults to 5, the middle of the grade, because that is the cell this site ranks every area by.

Rates are recomputed from the published base table and this area's percentage, in the order the law sets: percentage first, rounding second, statutory ceiling last.