Where a published federal salary is highest, by OPM's locality pay area

Where a federal civilian employee is stationed decides part of what the job pays. The General Schedule adds a locality payment for each of the pay areas OPM defines, and OPM's workforce file records the area of every employee whose duty station it publishes. Across the 58 areas in the month this hub leads with, the median published salary is highest in Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, at $154,263 over 191,325 salaries. It is next highest in San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, at $138,007. The lowest is Fresno-Madera-Hanford, at $64,239 over 7,518 salaries. Against the national median of $110,956, 20 of the areas are higher.

What an area's median is, and what it is not

A median here is the middle salary of the employees in the area whose pay OPM published: 997,601 of them across all the areas. It is not the pay of one job in different places. An area's median moves with its locality payment and with which jobs are stationed there, and the file gives no way to hold one of them still: an area whose federal work is mostly senior headquarters staff and one whose work is mostly entry-level processing can have the same locality rate and very different medians.

So a high median says the salaries OPM published for that area are high, and nothing more. It does not say a given job pays more there, or that anyone chose the area for its pay.

Whose station is not in any area

OPM withholds the duty station of 954,180 employees, 47.1% of the file, under the same policy that withholds their pay. They are the Department of Defense, the security agencies outside Washington and the sensitive occupations the hub's other brief describes, and none of them is counted in any area here. The areas' medians describe the part of the workforce whose station and salary OPM published.