• Spotlight On...
• Federal Benefits Open Season
• New Employee Orientation
• Standard Position Description Packages
• The 2009 Planning Calendar is now available
• The 2008 Planning Calendar is now available
• The 2007 Planning Calendar is now available
• ARS Strategic Leadership Succession Planning

Instructions for Accessing Wage Schedules on the Internet

The homepage address (URL) is: http://www.cpms.osd.mil/wage/wage.html. After logging on to this homepage via Netscape, follow these steps to access a wage schedule:

1. Click "Wage Setting Division - Pay Schedules"

2. Click "Appropriated Fund Schedules (Federal blue collar)" (Do not use the Title 38--Special Salary Rate Tables).

3. Scroll past the map of the US until you see the listing of States. Click the State having the location you want to access. For example, if you want to find a wage schedule for an employee working in Philadelphia, PA., you would click "Pennsylvania."

4. Find the survey area you are interested in and click that entry. In the above example, you would see Philadelphia listed as a location under Pennsylvania, so you would click "Pennslyvannia."

5. Click the schedule you need. Schedules are shown by the date they are posted and only the current schedule is posted. For example, a schedule might be shown as 1218115N.html. This means that wage schedule 115N was posted on the homepage on December 18 and is the current schedule. In a few sites will find more than one schedule listed. For example, under Philadelphia you will see:

Ignore the "F" schedules. They apply to the Army Corps of Engineer Floating Plants/Barges. The "P" schedules apply only to wage employees in the printing and lithographic occupations and are little used in USDA.

Since Philadelphia has both "N" and "R" schedules and we are a civilian agency, select the "N." The "N" schedule usually will have slightly higher rates. This is because schedules for civilian agencies may be derived from wage data that has been "imported" from outside the survey area. Wage data is imported when there are too few comparable private sector jobs in the survey area and data on comparable jobs from the nearest area is used. This results in a slightly more generous wage schedule ("N"). By law, DOD is barred from using the "imported" data and an "R" schedule must be used for DOD employees in that particular area.

If there are sufficient comparable jobs in the survey area and no data is imported, the only scheduled created is designated the "R" schedule. In sum, in a wage area where there is an "N" and a "R" schedule, select "N." When there is only one schedule, it will be "R" and must be used.

Note: the DOD homepage schedules are not official ARS wage schedules. While they may be relied on as accurate, they should be considered advance drafts. The official signed copies of the wage schedules are distributed to the HRD operating branches as they are received.