Have you started working for the Civil Service and you need to know all about the wage system? All white collar personnel follow the Civil Service Pay Scale. That means that no matter if you are professional, clerical, administrative or technical member of staff, your wages and follow the general system called the General Schedule in the US. Unfortunately, all rates have been frozen since 2010 due to the worldwide economic crisis. The new updated Civil Service Pay Scale is presented by the Department of Finance and has been effective since the 2^nd of January 2011. What is important in calculating your wages is your grade. According to the grade you have in the Civil Service you will see the corresponding salary. Please keep in mind that this Pay Scale is only the BASE; you may be eligible for additional pay adjustments according to your geographic location. These adjustments may vary from 14.16% to 35.15%. So, you can calculate your salary easily if you follow these steps.

At the beginning you need to find the base rate for your grade; then find your geographic location and multiply the base rate by the percentage for this location. Finally, just add the result to your base rate and the final result is your salary!!! Let me give you an example. If you are a GS-11 Step 1 in Boston, your base rate is $50,287. The percentage adjustment is 24.80%, so the result of the multiplication is $12,471.176. If you add this to the base rate, your salary is $62,758.176. It definitely sounds better than the base rate salary, doesn't it? So, check the base rate table in addition to the table of the geographic locations and make your calculations. Then you will know if you can afford to buy a new car this year or you need to wait until you are promoted to grade 2! There can be many different type of classifications in the different countries as if you say that only one country have good pay and other have a low civil service pay scale rate. The main thing that is common in all the matters is the scales. The higher scales have higher pays but this is not the hard rule. There are many low grade persons having more pay this is because of the service. If you have more service, you will get more and more pay due to increased allowances.