1811 Pay Explained: GS Scale, Locality, and LEAP (2026)

The salary on the announcement is not what the job pays. It’s the bottom layer of a three-layer stack, and most applicants never see the other two until an offer letter shows up with a number they weren’t expecting.

Here’s 2026 in real dollars. A new agent hired at GL-7 step 1 has a base rate of $48,854. Put that same agent anywhere in the Rest of U.S. locality area and it’s $57,188. Add availability pay, the 25 percent premium that comes with carrying an 1811 series, and the money is right around $71,500. Same person, same grade, same first day. The announcement said forty-eight thousand.

I’m going to walk each layer, with the OPM tables they come from, and then show you the one pay decision you actually control.

Layer one: the GL base rates almost nobody explains

Federal law enforcement officers don’t get paid off the regular General Schedule at the entry grades. OPM publishes special base rates for law enforcement officers at grades 3 through 10, which is where that GL prefix on your offer comes from. For 2026, incorporating the 1 percent General Schedule increase effective January 2026:

Grade	Step 1	Step 5	Step 10
GL-5	$42,919	$47,559	$53,359
GL-7	$48,854	$54,602	$61,787
GL-9	$54,485	$61,517	$70,307

The footnote on that table matters more than the numbers: these special rates “must be the basis for computing locality payments.” So the LEO bump isn’t a flat add-on at the bottom, it gets multiplied by everything that comes after it.

Above grade 10 the special rates stop. A GS-11, GS-12 or GS-13 agent is on the same base table as the analyst down the hall, and the GL prefix quietly disappears off your paperwork.

Layer two: locality, and why your duty station is a raise or a pay cut

There are 51 locality pay areas, and OPM publishes a separate LEO table for every one of them. Two ends of the spread, 2026:

	Rest of U.S. (17.06%)	Washington-Baltimore (33.94%)
GL-7 step 1	$57,188	$65,435
GL-9 step 1	$63,780	$72,977
GS-13 step 1	$106,437	$121,785

That’s $8,247 of difference at GL-7 for identical work, before availability pay multiplies the gap. It’s also why the GS-13 ceiling people quote at each other in forums is meaningless without a city attached.

Don’t chase the percentage, though. A 33.94 percent locality rate in the DC area is not free money, it’s an adjustment for what a house costs there, and plenty of agents have taken that number and found out what it buys. Also worth knowing before you rank your preferences: some agencies tell you your office before the academy and at least one still doesn’t tell you until you’re already in training. Where you’ll live is a bigger life decision than the percentage attached to it.

What is law enforcement availability pay?

LEAP is a 25 percent premium paid to criminal investigators under 5 U.S.C. 5545a, and it’s generally an entitlement rather than a bonus somebody decides to give you. The price is in the statute: you have to average two or more hours of unscheduled duty per regular workday, and you and your supervisor certify that annually to the head of the agency.

Read OPM’s own fact sheet and the trade becomes obvious. An agency may not pay an investigator receiving availability pay for administratively uncontrollable overtime or FLSA overtime. Those unscheduled hours are already bought and paid for. That’s the deal: the government pays you a quarter more up front and gets to call you whenever it wants.

The conditions show up in the announcements too. An IRS Criminal Investigation posting I pulled while writing this lists LEAP as a condition of employment worded as “agree to work an average of two extra hours per day,” plus a requirement, under Treasury’s own directive, that special agents live within 50 miles of their duty station. That’s the fine print on a 25 percent raise.

One more thing worth knowing before it happens to somebody you work with. If an agency denies your certification, that drop is treated as a reduction in pay under 5545a(e)(2), with the appeal rights that come with it. Availability pay isn’t discretionary walking-around money. It’s part of the position.

Is availability pay 25 percent of base, or base plus locality?

The statute says 25 percent of “the rate of basic pay for the position,” and agencies describe that base two different ways in writing. The FBI’s special agent announcements spell the arithmetic out, saying availability pay “is 25% of the base and locality pay” and writing the calculation as 25% x (base + locality). A recent Secret Service special agent announcement words it as “additional compensation of 25% of the basic rate of pay” and never mentions locality at all.

That’s a real difference in take-home, so don’t guess at it. Run both versions of the math, plan around the smaller one, and ask the HR specialist who sends your tentative offer to show you the calculation in writing before you sign. I’d also point out that the FBI posts the same dollar range on multiple announcements and labels it “base + locality + availability pay” on one and base plus locality on another. Even inside one agency the labels drift.

The grade you’re hired at is the only pay decision you control

Everything above happens to you. This part you do.

I was offered the lower entry grade, same as most of the people who ended up in my class. The announcement also listed the requirements for the grade above it. So I copied their exact wording for that higher grade into a document, copied the matching lines out of my own resume next to it, and sent one short, respectful email to the same person who’d sent the offer. No argument, no demand. Just: I believe I clearly meet these, can you confirm whether I’m right or wrong. A month later a new offer showed up at the higher grade.

Classmates tried to fix their grade after they got to the academy. Qualified people, with paperwork that supported them. They were told there was nothing that could be done. The bump has to happen before you enter training, and almost nobody sends the email while the window is open.

Price it out at 2026 rates in the Rest of U.S. area. GL-7 step 1 with availability pay comes to about $71,485. GL-9 step 1 comes to about $79,725. Call it eight grand in year one, except it never closes, because every step increase and every promotion for the rest of your career gets computed off the higher number. Five minutes of writing. If you want the mechanics of matching announcement language to your own, that’s the whole method in my federal resume guide, and it’s the same skill either way.

What about the pension nobody prices in?

Federal law enforcement retirement is the part that makes the whole career math work, and applicants almost never ask about it. Under 5 U.S.C. 8415(e), your annuity is 1.7 percent of your high-3 average for the first 20 years of covered service, then 1 percent per year after that. A regular federal employee gets 1 percent for all of it.

Then run the two facts together. Availability pay counts as basic pay for the retirement definition at 5 U.S.C. 8331(3), which FERS adopts by cross-reference at 8401(4). So that 25 percent isn’t sitting outside your pension, it’s inside the average your pension is calculated from.

Twenty years of covered service gets you 34 percent of a high-3 that includes availability pay, payable as early as age 50 with 20 years, or at any age with 25 years of covered service under 8412(d)(1). The tradeoff is on the other end: mandatory separation at 57, with an agency head able to hold you until 60 if the public interest requires it. You’re not choosing whether to retire in your fifties. You’re choosing to start early enough that it’s a full annuity when you do.

That’s also the honest answer to the pay question people are really asking. Compared against agencies and grades, starting salaries in this series are decent and not remarkable. The back end is remarkable.

What to do before you sign anything

Pull the 2026 LEO table for the actual duty station in the offer, not the national average somebody quoted you. Add 25 percent to base plus locality and then check that number against what the agency put in writing. Read the announcement’s qualification section for the grade above the one you were offered, and if you meet it, send the email this week, because the day you raise your hand in training that door is closed for good.

And if you’re still deciding whether any of this is worth four years of testing and silence, go read what the job actually requires of you first. The paycheck is the easiest part of this career to research and the smallest part of the decision.

Quick answers

How much does a federal 1811 special agent make?

In 2026, a new agent hired at GL-7 step 1 has a base rate of $48,854. In the Rest of U.S. locality area that becomes $57,188, and law enforcement availability pay adds 25 percent on top of it, which lands around $71,500. A GS-13 agent in that same locality area sits at $106,437 before availability pay.

What is law enforcement availability pay?

LEAP is a 25 percent premium paid to 1811 criminal investigators under 5 U.S.C. 5545a. You earn it by averaging two or more hours of unscheduled duty per regular workday, certified every year by you and your supervisor. It takes the place of administratively uncontrollable overtime and FLSA overtime, so you do not get paid extra for those unscheduled hours.

Does availability pay count toward your federal pension?

Yes. 5 U.S.C. 5545a(h)(2)(A) treats availability pay as part of basic pay for the retirement definition at 5 U.S.C. 8331(3), and FERS adopts that same definition at 8401(4). So the 25 percent rides inside the high-3 average your annuity is computed from.