The government’s Personnel Classification System includes Wage Grade occupations grouped into families of like jobs for blue collar workers. The 36 occupational families range from WG-2500 to WG-9000.

The Federal Wage System (FWS) is a uniform pay-setting system that covers Federal appropriated fund and nonappropriated fund blue-collar employees who are paid by the hour. The system's goal is to make sure that Federal trade, craft, and laboring employees within a local wage area who perform the same duties receive the same rate of pay.

The Federal Wage System (FWS) is a pay scale system that applies to blue-collar Federal government workers. The Office of Personnel Management, with the help of local labor unions, establishes hourly FWS pay tables for every major Government facility in the United States.

The Federal Wage System (FWS) was developed to make the pay of Federal blue-collar workers comparable to prevailing private sector rates in each local wage area. Before the FWS, there was no central authority to establish wage equity for Federal trade, craft, and laboring employees.

Washington, D.C. – The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) today issued a proposed rule to increase parity between the Federal Wage System (FWS), the federal pay schedule for blue-collar workers, and the General Schedule (GS) system, the government’s largest pay scale.