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

California GS pay scale, 2026

5 different locality pay areas cover California, and the same GS-12 step 5 is paid anywhere from $101,954 to $126,817 depending on nothing but which county the building sits in.

Locality pay areas

5covering federal duty stations in California.

Spread within the state

$24,863between the best-paid and worst-paid area here, at GS-12 step 5. Same grade, same step, same state.

What it buys

$109,691at average U.S. prices, from a salary of $126,817.

Against Rest of U.S.

+$25,374is what the best-paid area in California adds over the $101,443 paid outside every named area.

Which areas cover California, and what each pays

Rates are GS-12 step 5 in 2026. The last column is how many counties of this state each area covers.

Locality pay area	Locality pay	On paper	Prices	What it buys	Counties here
San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA	46.34%	$126,817	115.6	$109,691	16
Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA	36.47%	$118,264	113.6	$104,137	9
San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA	33.72%	$115,880	111.9	$103,569	1
Sacramento-Roseville, CA-NV	29.76%	$112,449	106.7	$105,418	12
Fresno-Madera-Hanford, CA	17.65%	$101,954	102.2	$99,800	5

The spread is $24,863 a year on an identical grade and step. Locality pay is set from what private employers in each region pay for comparable work, so an area with a strong private labor market pays more — and an area with expensive housing does not, unless the two happen to coincide.

Every grade at step 5 in California

Annual rates in U.S. dollars. Cells marked ▲ have been cut to the $197,200 statutory ceiling.

Grade	San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland	Los Angeles-Long Beach	San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad	Sacramento-Roseville	Fresno-Madera-Hanford
GS-1	37,447	34,921	34,218	33,204	30,105
GS-2	40,767	38,018	37,252	36,149	32,775
GS-3	45,957	42,857	41,993	40,750	36,947
GS-4	51,586	48,107	47,138	45,742	41,473
GS-5	57,715	53,822	52,738	51,176	46,400
GS-6	64,335	59,996	58,787	57,046	51,722
GS-7	71,493	66,671	65,328	63,393	57,477
GS-8	79,173	73,833	72,345	70,203	63,651
GS-9	87,451	81,553	79,910	77,543	70,306
GS-10	96,298	89,803	87,993	85,387	77,418
GS-11	105,808	98,672	96,684	93,820	85,064
GS-12	126,817	118,264	115,880	112,449	101,954
GS-13	150,802	140,631	137,797	133,716	121,237
GS-14	178,204	166,185	162,836	158,014	143,267
GS-15	197,200	195,474	191,535	185,863	168,517

Each area has its own full table of 150 rates; follow the links above. To put your own grade and step against any of them, use the pay calculator, which will also find your area from a ZIP code.

Which one applies to you?

Your duty station decides it — the place you physically report to, not where you live and not where your agency is headquartered.

Locality pay areas are defined as lists of counties, and county lines rarely follow anything a person would notice. A house on one side of a line and an office on the other are paid by the office. Telework arrangements have their own rules and can change which area applies, so confirm with your servicing human resources office rather than assuming.

A few military installations are assigned by OPM to a different area than the county around them: the base gate can be a pay boundary. Each area page lists its counties in full.

What a move inside California is actually worth

Transfers between areas in the same state look like a raise on the offer letter. Here is how much of each one survives contact with local prices.

Sacramento-Roseville, CA-NV to San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA: $14,368 more on paper, $4,273 more after prices — about 30% of what it looks like.
Fresno-Madera-Hanford, CA to San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA: $24,863 more on paper, $9,891 more after prices — about 40% of what it looks like.
Sacramento-Roseville, CA-NV to Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA: $5,815 more on paper, $-1,281 more after prices — about -22% of what it looks like.
Fresno-Madera-Hanford, CA to Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA: $16,310 more on paper, $4,336 more after prices — about 27% of what it looks like.

The percentage is the part of the headline increase that still buys something once the difference in what things cost is taken out. Where it is small, the move is a change of address rather than a change of income; where it is large, it is a genuine raise. Neither is visible on a pay table.

Two things this does not include, and both can matter more than the figures above. State and local income tax is not modelled here at all. Nor is housing tenure: a mortgage signed years ago, or a house owned outright, changes the arithmetic in a way no published price index can see.

Cities named in the California pay areas

OPM names each area after its principal cities. These are the ones that appear in the areas covering California.

San Jose
San Francisco
Oakland
Los Angeles
Long Beach
San Diego
Chula Vista
Carlsbad
Sacramento
Roseville
Fresno
Madera
Hanford

The list is a label rather than a boundary. An area reaches well past the city limits of the places it is named after, and plenty of towns nobody would associate with any of them are paid at the same rate. What decides it is the county.

Some of these cities are not in California at all: an area named after a city in a neighboring state can still reach across the line and cover counties here. That is the point of the whole system — pay follows labor markets, and labor markets ignore state borders.

How California sits against the rest of the country

Of the 58 locality pay areas in the General Schedule, 0 pay more at GS-12 step 5 than the best-paid area in California.

The areas covering this state account for 43 named counties of the 920 that OPM lists across the whole system. Every county not on one of those lists falls into Rest of U.S., which is why a state can contain both a named area and large stretches paid at the floor rate.

Comparing states directly is less useful than it looks. Areas cross state lines: several reach into three or more states at once, and an employee moving between two of those states inside the same area sees no change in pay whatsoever. The unit of the system is the area, not the state, and the national ranking is the honest way to read it.

What a state page is good for is the question that brings people here: if a federal job in this state comes up, what is it likely to pay, and how much does the answer depend on exactly where the building is. For California the answer is above.

Where else these areas reach

Locality pay areas are lists of counties, and county lists ignore state borders entirely.

San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA lies entirely within California: it covers 16 counties here and nowhere else.
Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA lies entirely within California: it covers 9 counties here and nowhere else.
San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA lies entirely within California: it covers 1 county here and nowhere else.
Sacramento-Roseville, CA-NV covers 12 counties in California and also reaches into Nevada. A federal employee moving between those states inside this area sees no change in pay at all.
Fresno-Madera-Hanford, CA lies entirely within California: it covers 5 counties here and nowhere else.

This is the part that surprises people transferring. A state line looks like a boundary and usually is one for tax, licensing and a dozen other things. For federal locality pay it is nothing: what matters is whether the county your duty station sits in appears on the list, and lists routinely span several states.

It also means the cost of living on either side of such a border can differ while the pay does not — which is one more reason the figure worth watching is not the salary but what the salary buys.