The Meaning of "General Schedule"

Under the federal government's "General Schedule" for "GS" pay scale for white-collar occupations, jobs are ranked according to level of responsibility and difficulty. Each federal job is assigned corresponding grades from GS-1 up to GS-15. Employees advance from one grade to another as they are promoted and their responsibilities increase. As your grade level goes up, so does your salary.

Each grade level has within it 10 steps. Employees move to higher steps within their grade based on the length of their tenure and acceptable job performance. Time-on-the-job service and job performance can bump up employees by steps within their grade - and that also means an increase in pay.

For 2008, basic pay under the General Schedule or GS pay plan is as follows:

Please note that GS pay is adjusted geographically and the majority of jobs pay a higher salary. Locality payments in the continental U.S. range from 13.18% to 32.53% . Pay rates outside the continental U.S. are 10% to 25% higher. Also, certain hard-to-fill jobs, usually in the scientific, technical, and medical fields, may have higher starting salaries. Exact pay information can be found on position vacancy announcements.

To view the 2008 Locality Pay Charts click on the link below: http://www.opm.gov/oca/08tables/indexGS.asp

Examples of Federal Salaries

The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government's HR department, is a good place to get an idea of federal salaries. Here's a glance that will give you some idea of the salary range you could be looking at should you decide to go fed:

Average annual salaries in the Federal Government in selected occupations, 2007

Occupation Salary

Source: US Office of Personnel Management

Information taken from publicservice.monster.com and www.usajobs.opm.gov