12/14/2011 – by Jenice Armstead
Many people know that government jobs pay, but most don’t know much outside that. The truth is that government jobs not only pay well, the pay is comprobable to the location of the position as well. Many different government agencies have different pay scales.
U.S. Government
The key to selecting a government agency is to research and find out as much as possible. You must research the agency and the pay scales for that particular agency. Find out about the locality pay, hazard pay, or any other positional pay that may be associated with the agency.
We all know that pay is an important aspect of any career choice, the government is no different from any other job that you have applied for. With a few exceptions – the government has great benefits that no other civilian company can match.
Where people get confused is with the General Schedule Step grades, GS pay scales have pay grades within the pay scale called STEPs. When you review the GS Pay scale on the Office of Personnel website you will see basic, locality and then there is also a pay scale that combines basic pay and locality depending on the location ofthe position. Among the pay scale are the steps of the pay. Steps are normally given to the pay grade employee depending on “time in grade,” with the normal promotional time period being 1 year.
Here is a web site for the Office of Personnel Management that will give you more insight on how this agency categorizes its pay grades and locality pay. http://www.opm.gov/flsa/oca/09tables/indexGS.asp