GS Levels and Pay Scale: What Each Grade Means on a Resume
GS is the General Schedule, the pay system for most white-collar federal jobs, graded GS-1 to GS-15 with 10 steps each. Inside government your grade means everything. To a private recruiter, and the ATS that screens your resume first, GS-13 means almost nothing. This guide gives you the real 2026 GS pay table, what each grade signals, what it is worth in the private sector, and the exact rule for whether to keep or strip your grade line.
By the numbers (sourced)
- $90,925
GS-13 base salary (Step 1) in 2026, before locality pay. GS-13 is among the highest-headcount grades and a widely cited ceiling for non-supervisory professionals, a convention rather than an OPM rule.
Source: OPM Salary Table 2026-GS - 15 grades
The General Schedule runs GS-1 to GS-15, and every grade has 10 steps. Above GS-15 the GS ends and the Senior Executive Service begins.
Source: OPM General Schedule - 17% to 46%
The 2026 locality pay range added on top of base GS pay, from 17.06 percent (Rest of U.S.) to 46.34 percent (San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland). Every GS employee is in some locality area.
Source: OPM 2026 locality tables - $228,000
The 2026 Senior Executive Service pay ceiling (certified agencies), where the General Schedule ends. GS-16, 17, and 18 were abolished by FEPCA in 1990.
Source: OPM Salary Table 2026-ES - $197,200
The Executive Schedule Level IV cap on locality-adjusted GS pay in 2026, which compresses the top steps of GS-15 in high-cost cities.
Source: OPM Salary Table 2026-EX - 386,826
Federal workers who departed January 2025 through January 2026, the largest single-year federal exodus on record. Most now need a GS grade translated for private employers.
Source: Fortune (Nov 2025)
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What GS levels are, and why your grade is invisible to a private recruiter
GS stands for General Schedule, the pay system that covers most white-collar federal employees. It runs from GS-1 to GS-15, and every grade has 10 steps. Your grade sets your pay band and the scope of your job; your step sets where you sit inside that band based on time and performance. A federal job is labeled with a four-digit occupational series and a two-digit grade together, for example 2210-13, an information technology management position at grade GS-13.
Inside government, that code means everything. A hiring manager reads GS-13 and instantly knows your pay, your scope, and roughly your seniority. Outside government, it means almost nothing. A recruiter at a private company, and the applicant tracking system that screens your resume before any human sees it, does not know that a GS-13 runs a program, owns a budget, and sits two grades below the top of the General Schedule. To a Workday or Greenhouse parser, GS-0343-13 is noise.
That gap is the whole problem this guide solves. Below you get the real 2026 GS pay table, what each grade signals, what it is worth in private-sector terms, and the exact rule for whether to keep or strip your grade line when you translate a federal resume for a private employer.
The 2026 GS pay scale: every grade, base pay
This is the base General Schedule for 2026, before locality pay is added. Base rates rose 1.0 percent in January 2026. These are the numbers behind every GS-13 salary search; the figure on your SF-50 is this base plus your locality percentage (covered in the next section).
| Grade | Step 1 (base) | Step 10 (base) |
|---|---|---|
| GS-1 | $22,584 | $28,248 |
| GS-2 | $25,393 | $31,953 |
| GS-3 | $27,708 | $36,024 |
| GS-4 | $31,103 | $40,436 |
| GS-5 | $34,799 | $45,239 |
| GS-6 | $38,791 | $50,428 |
| GS-7 | $43,106 | $56,039 |
| GS-8 | $47,738 | $62,057 |
| GS-9 | $52,727 | $68,549 |
| GS-10 | $58,064 | $75,479 |
| GS-11 | $63,795 | $82,938 |
| GS-12 | $76,463 | $99,404 |
| GS-13 | $90,925 | $118,204 |
| GS-14 | $107,446 | $139,684 |
| GS-15 | $126,384 | $164,301 |
Base pay only, from OPM Salary Table 2026-GS. Actual pay is higher after locality adjustment, which adds 17.06 percent (Rest of U.S.) to 46.34 percent (San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland) in 2026. Locality-adjusted pay is capped at Executive Schedule Level IV, $197,200 in 2026, which compresses the top steps of GS-15 in high-cost areas. Common reference points: GS-13 Step 5 base is $103,049; GS-12 Step 1 base is $76,463.
How locality pay changes these numbers
Every GS employee is in a locality pay area. Named metro areas each carry their own percentage, and a single Rest of U.S. area covers everywhere else, so no one is paid on base alone. In 2026 the add-on ranges from 17.06 percent (Rest of U.S.) to 46.34 percent (San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland). A GS-13 Step 1 at $90,925 base earns $106,437 in the Rest of U.S. area and materially more in a high-cost city. When you translate pay to a private target, use your locality-adjusted total, not the base figure in the table above.
Source: OPM 2026 locality pay tables (Rest of U.S. and San Francisco), effective January 2026.
What your GS grade is worth in the private sector
Hiring managers outside government do not know what GS-13 means, so translate every grade in your history to its corporate equivalent. The bands below are illustrative private-sector total compensation for the corporate title, not federal pay and not base salary. They vary widely by industry, company size, and location; treat them as a starting anchor, then let the actual scope of your role drive the final title.
| GS Grade | Corporate Title | Typical Salary Band (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| GS-7 / GS-9 | Analyst, Associate, Coordinator | $65,000 to $85,000 |
| GS-11 | Senior Analyst, Manager | $85,000 to $110,000 |
| GS-12 | Senior Manager, Lead, Sr. Analyst II | $105,000 to $135,000 |
| GS-13 | Senior Manager, Associate Director, Principal | $130,000 to $170,000 |
| GS-14 | Director, Senior Director, Senior Manager | $160,000 to $210,000 |
| GS-15 | VP, Senior Director, Sr. Principal | $200,000 to $280,000 |
| SES (Senior Executive Service) | VP, SVP, Chief Officer | $250,000+ |
Private-sector total-compensation medians, not federal pay, and kept consistent with the crosswalk in our Federal Resume to Private Sector guide. The real distribution is bimodal: general-market roles (BLS general and operations managers, $102,950 median) sit lower, while tech and finance run materially higher (self-reported levels.fyi director total comp exceeds $290,000). Two rows carry the widest spread. Director (GS-14) ranges from roughly $130,000 in nonprofit or small business to over $290,000 in tech. VP (GS-15) means a mid-level officer in banking (about $150,000 to $250,000) but an executive in general corporate and tech (over $300,000). Use these bands as anchors, not quotes.
What is your GS grade actually worth to this employer?
Drop in a real job description. We score your federal resume against it and translate each GS-grade bullet into the title and keywords that employer's ATS is scanning for.
The occupational series behind your grade
The four-digit series names your occupation and stays the same as you move up the ladder; only the grade changes. Six series carry a large share of the federal workforce, and if you are translating a resume you have probably held one of them. Each translates to a private-sector function.
- 2210
- Information Technology Management Series. Federal IT specialists, from service desk to enterprise architecture. Translates to IT, software, cloud, cybersecurity, or infrastructure roles.
- 0343
- Management and Program Analysis Series. Federal program and operations analysts. Translates to program manager, operations analyst, or management consultant.
- 0301
- Miscellaneous Administration and Program Series. A catch-all for program and administrative work with no dedicated series. Translate to the closest private function: operations, program coordination, or policy.
- 0610
- Nurse Series. Federal registered nurses at the VA, IHS, DoD, and Bureau of Prisons. Translates directly to clinical RN roles; the license, not the grade, is what a private health system reads.
- 0810
- Civil Engineering Series. Federal civil engineers at USACE, DOT, and GSA. A PE license plus GS-12 and above translates cleanly to private civil, structural, or infrastructure engineering.
- 1102
- Contracting Series. Federal contracting officers and specialists. Translates to procurement, vendor management, sourcing, or contract management.
How to put your GS grade on a private-sector resume
The single rule: translate the scope, strip the code. Here is what to remove from each federal position and what to put in its place.
Don't: The series and grade code (e.g., GS-0343-13), the step, hours per week, and salary.
Do: A corporate job title (Senior Program Manager) plus the scope you owned: budget, team size, program or contract value.
Why: Private ATS do not parse the code, and a recruiter reads it as a signal that you have not adapted to private norms. The scope is what carries your seniority across the gap.
Don't: GS-13 used as a proxy for your seniority.
Do: Quantified scope that proves the seniority: a $14M program, 4 teams, 22 percent faster delivery.
Why: Two GS-13s can hold completely different jobs. The grade encodes pay and complexity, not a role; only the scope translates.
Don't: Duty statements copied from your position description, written in third person.
Do: First-person achievement bullets that lead with an action verb and end with a number.
Why: USAJOBS rewards exhaustive duty narratives; private ATS and a 6-second recruiter scan reward quantified outcomes.
Don't: Stripping the grade entirely for a defense or govtech employer staffed by ex-federal hiring managers.
Do: Lead with the corporate title, but you may keep the grade in a parenthetical (Senior Program Manager, former GS-13) at Lockheed, Booz Allen, Leidos, and similar.
Why: At these employers some hiring managers read GS grades fluently; everywhere else the grade only costs you space and clarity.
Before and after: a GS-13 resume line
Same person, same job. The federal line leads with the code and a duty; the private line leads with a title and a measurable result.
Management Analyst, GS-0343-13, Step 5, 40 hrs/wk, $103,049/yr. Served as program analyst responsible for oversight of a $14M program in accordance with agency policy and OMB guidance.
Senior Program Manager. Owned a $14M, 3-year program across 4 cross-functional teams; cut average delivery time 22 percent by restructuring milestone reviews.
The federal line spends its first characters on a code (GS-0343-13), a step, hours, and pay, none of which a private recruiter or ATS uses. The private line replaces all of it with a recognizable title and the scope that actually proves a GS-13 level of responsibility, then adds the missing ingredient: a quantified outcome. The grade is gone; the seniority survives.
See your own before and after
The line above is one example. Get every GS-coded bullet on your resume rewritten to a private-sector standard, section by section, in under a minute.
GS grade groupings, education, and what each signals
Grades cluster into three career bands. This is the fastest way to read where a grade sits and what it signals to a private employer.
| Band | Grades | Typical entry education | What it signals to a private employer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry / developmental | GS-5, GS-7, GS-9 | Bachelor's (GS-5), bachelor's with honors (GS-7), master's (GS-9) | Early-career individual contributor; analyst or associate scope. |
| Journey / full-performance | GS-11, GS-12 | PhD or 3 years of graduate study reaches GS-11; GS-12 by experience | Experienced individual contributor or first-line lead; manager scope. |
| Senior / expert / supervisory | GS-13, GS-14, GS-15 | Reached by experience and competition, not by a degree | Senior manager to director-and-above scope; GS-13 is a common non-supervisory ceiling. |
Education is the OPM minimum for entry at that grade; qualifying experience can substitute for a degree under each occupation's standard. The non-supervisory ceiling note for GS-13 is a commonly reported convention, not an OPM rule. Above GS-15 the General Schedule ends: senior executives move to the Senior Executive Service (SES), which pays $151,661 to $228,000 in 2026, with Senior-Level (SL) and Scientific and Professional (ST) systems for non-executive experts.
One rule in flux: time-in-grade
Under current law you generally must spend 52 weeks at one grade before you can be promoted to the next, the time-in-grade requirement. It is why a clean one-grade-per-year progression reads as normal on a federal resume and a two-grade jump in under a year looks anomalous to a federal reviewer. One change is in progress: on May 28, 2026, OPM published a proposed rule to eliminate the time-in-grade requirement, with the comment period closing July 27, 2026. As of August 2026 it is still a proposal, not final, so the 52-week rule remains in effect. If you are explaining your grade history to a federal reviewer, cite the rule as current; if you are translating to a private resume, time-in-grade does not matter at all.
Source: 5 CFR 300.604; OPM proposed rule, Federal Register 2026-10552 (May 28, 2026).
Turn your GS grade into a private-resume line in 3 steps
The grade does not translate; the scope behind it does. This is the fastest path from a GS-coded federal bullet to a private-resume line that parses and ranks.
- 01
Map the grade to scope, not a title
Write down what you actually owned at that grade: budget, team size, program or contract value, systems, and stakeholders. The scope, not the number, is what proves your level to a private employer.
- 02
Pick the corporate title from the crosswalk, then verify against a real posting
Use the GS-to-corporate crosswalk above as a starting anchor. Then open a target job description and match the title and keywords the employer actually uses; the right title is the one their ATS is scanning for, not a fixed mapping.
- 03
Strip the code, quantify the bullet, and scan it
Delete the series, grade, step, hours, and salary. Rewrite each duty as a first-person achievement that ends with a number. Then run the resume against the target job description to see your ATS score and the keywords you are missing.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Sources cited in this guide
- [1]OPM Salary Table 2026-GS (base General Schedule, incorporating the 1% January 2026 increase)
Primary source for every base-pay figure in the 2026 GS table.
- [2]OPM Salary Table 2026-RUS (Rest of U.S. locality, 17.06%)
Source for the locality floor and the GS-13 Step 1 Rest-of-U.S. total.
- [3]OPM Salary Table 2026-SF (San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland locality, 46.34%)
Source for the highest 2026 locality percentage.
- [4]OPM Salary Table 2026-ES (Senior Executive Service pay range, 2026)
Source for the $151,661 to $228,000 SES range.
- [5]OPM Salary Table 2026-EX (Executive Schedule; Level IV pay cap $197,200)
Source for the locality-adjusted GS pay cap.
- [6]OPM within-grade increases fact sheet (WGI waiting periods)
Source for the 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year step waiting periods.
- [7]OPM history: Senior-Level and Scientific/Professional positions (abolition of GS-16, 17, 18 by FEPCA)
Source for the SES / SL / ST structure above GS-15.
- [8]OPM General Schedule qualification policies (educational requirements table)
Source for the education-to-grade mapping.
- [9]USAJOBS: What is a series or grade?
Source for how series and grade appear on a federal resume.
- [10]5 CFR 300.604 (time-in-grade requirement)
Current time-in-grade rule.
- [11]Federal Register 2026-10552: Elimination of Time-in-Grade (OPM proposed rule, May 28, 2026)
The pending proposal to eliminate time-in-grade; not final as of August 2026.
- [12]Fortune (Nov 2025): How many layoffs has DOGE caused, and what's the impact on the labor market?
Source for the 386,826 federal departures figure.
- [13]US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook (management)
General-market comp anchor for the private-sector crosswalk bands.
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