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Cincinnati-Wilmington-Maysville, OH-KY-IN

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

Cincinnati-Wilmington-Maysville, OH-KY-IN GS pay scale, 2026

Every General Schedule rate for this locality pay area, what the 21.93% 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, 21.93%: + $19,004
Annual rate: $105,663

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

Paid #29, 18th in what it buys

+11Places gained once local prices are counted, out of 57 areas with published price data.

What it actually buys

$110,793at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $105,663. Local price level 95.4 against a national average of 100.

Ceiling watch

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

Every 2026 rate in Cincinnati-Wilmington-Maysville, OH-KY-IN

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	27,537	28,460	29,375	30,287	31,201	31,736	32,642	33,554	33,592	34,443
GS-2	30,962	31,698	32,725	33,592	33,967	34,966	35,964	36,963	37,962	38,960
GS-3	33,784	34,911	36,038	37,164	38,291	39,418	40,544	41,671	42,797	43,924
GS-4	37,924	39,188	40,453	41,717	42,982	44,246	45,510	46,775	48,039	49,304
GS-5	42,430	43,845	45,259	46,674	48,088	49,502	50,917	52,331	53,746	55,160
GS-6	47,298	48,874	50,451	52,028	53,604	55,181	56,757	58,334	59,910	61,487
GS-7	52,559	54,311	56,063	57,816	59,568	61,320	63,072	64,824	66,576	68,328
GS-8	58,207	60,147	62,087	64,027	65,967	67,906	69,846	71,786	73,726	75,666
GS-9	64,290	66,434	68,577	70,721	72,864	75,008	77,151	79,295	81,438	83,582
GS-10	70,797	73,157	75,516	77,875	80,235	82,594	84,954	87,313	89,672	92,032
GS-11	77,785	80,379	82,972	85,566	88,159	90,752	93,346	95,939	98,533	101,126
GS-12	93,231	96,339	99,447	102,555	105,663	108,771	111,879	114,987	118,095	121,203
GS-13	110,865	114,561	118,256	121,952	125,648	129,343	133,039	136,735	140,430	144,126
GS-14	131,009	135,376	139,744	144,112	148,479	152,847	157,214	161,582	165,949	170,317
GS-15	154,100	159,237	164,374	169,511	174,648	179,785	184,921	190,058	195,195	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 works in your favor: the area ranks #29 on the size of the paycheck but #18 once local prices are counted. The salary looks unremarkable and buys more than it appears to.

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
Cincinnati-Wilmington-Maysville, OH-KY-IN$110,793

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 1 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 10

Hits the ceiling here. Only the top step is affected.

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

Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS pays $2,565 less on paper than this locality and still leaves you better off once prices are counted. There are 10 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
15	Omaha-Council Bluffs-Fremont, NE-IA	$102,457	91.9	$111,474
16	Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS	$103,098	92.5	$111,406
17	Hartford-East Hartford, CT-MA	$114,459	102.7	$111,400
18	Cincinnati-Wilmington-Maysville, OH-KY-IN	$105,663	95.4	$110,793
19	Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV	$104,883	94.7	$110,787
20	Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Olean, NY	$106,079	95.8	$110,679
21	Corpus Christi-Kingsville-Alice, TX	$101,937	92.7	$109,999

Which cities does this cover?

OPM names this area after its principal cities: Cincinnati, Wilmington and Maysville. They are not all in the same state, and that is the point worth taking away: the area crosses 3 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: 27 counties in all, which is among the broader definitions in the system. Plenty of towns nobody would associate with Cincinnati are paid at this rate. What decides it is the county your duty station sits in, and the full list is below.

Cincinnati
Wilmington
Maysville

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 27 counties across 3 states (IN, KY, OH). Crossing a state line inside it does not change your pay; crossing out of it does.

Every county in this locality

27 places paid at this rate

Adams County, OH
Brown County, OH
Butler County, OH
Clermont County, OH
Clinton County, OH
Hamilton County, OH
Highland County, OH
Warren County, OH
Boone County, KY
Bracken County, KY
Campbell County, KY
Carroll County, KY
Fleming County, KY
Gallatin County, KY
Grant County, KY
Kenton County, KY
Lewis County, KY
Mason County, KY
Owen County, KY
Pendleton County, KY
Robertson County, KY
Dearborn County, IN
Franklin County, IN
Ohio County, IN
Ripley County, IN
Switzerland County, IN
Union County, IN

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 Cincinnati-Wilmington-Maysville, OH-KY-IN in 2026 that percentage is 21.93%, which turns a base rate of $86,659 into $105,663 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 21.93% over base, that ceiling is reached inside the published table: 1 of the 150 cells here are printed at the cap rather than at what the formula produces.

Steps are not evenly spaced, which catches out anyone trying to extrapolate from the first one. In the 2026 base table the gap between step 8 and step 9 of GS-1 is $46, while the gap between step 1 and step 2 is over $1,100. Every figure on this page is therefore read from the published table rather than derived from a formula.

Work out a different grade and step

GS-12, step 5 in Cincinnati-Wilmington-Maysville, OH-KY-IN

$105,663

Of the 57 areas with a published price level: #29 on the payslip, #18 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.