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Federal pay-history worksheet

FERS high-3 calculator

Find the best three consecutive service years in your dated pay history—not merely the three largest salaries—and inspect every OPM-style weight behind the result.

Rule snapshot
Service axis
1,080 OPM days
Privacy
Browser-only · no storage

OPM Chapter 50 worksheet

Build the timeline from actual rate-effective dates, then inspect the winning service window.

01 · Scope

Confirm the calculation path

Complex payroll cases need personal agency records, not a public data feed or a broad approximation.

02 · Pay history

Add every rate period in the search range

Rows may be entered out of order; the engine sorts a copy. Do not omit lower-paid intervening Federal service.

Pay-rate period 1

Use inclusive dates. Split the history whenever the retirement-creditable annual rate changes.

No historical-pay warehouse required. The calculation needs personal effective dates and retirement-creditable rates that public salary tables cannot reconstruct reliably.

Warnings and boundaries

    Calculation assumptions

    • Entered periods are creditable civilian service unless an exact excluded interval is represented as a confirmed gap.
    • Annual rates are retirement-creditable annualized basic pay, not gross compensation or take-home pay.
    • The calculation reconstructs average pay only; it does not decide retirement eligibility or calculate an annuity.

    Rule version 2026-07-22 · next review by 2027-07-01

    Rules and sources last reviewed . The calculator uses the dates and retirement-creditable annual rates you enter; no salary-table inference, government API, external account request, or FedUp data-platform dependency is used.

    Entries stay in this browser and are neither transmitted nor stored. Your agency and OPM records control the official high-3 and retirement benefit.

    Methodology

    Search service time, then show the worksheet

    A high-3 is a weighted rate over consecutive service—not a salary maximum, a calendar-year average, or the last three W-2 totals.

    1. 01

      Enter retirement-creditable pay

      Use each annualized rate from an SF-50 or payroll record, including only additions your agency treats as basic pay for retirement. Personal and projected rates stay visibly labeled.

    2. 02

      Resolve the service timeline

      Add the inclusive dates for every rate. Overlaps stop. A calendar gap must be confirmed as a true break or exact noncreditable period so lower-paid intervening Federal service cannot disappear.

    3. 03

      Search 1,080 service days

      The engine checks every complete civil-date window totaling three OPM service years. It uses 30-day months, gives no separate credit to a 31st, and can stitch confirmed breaks in service.

    4. 04

      Audit OPM-style weighting

      Each winning rate receives a six-decimal time factor and a cent-rounded weighted-pay amount. Those amounts are totaled, divided by three, and rounded to the nearest whole dollar.

    segment weighted pay = annual retirement-basic-pay rate × OPM time factor

    high-3 = round((sum of 3 service years' weighted pay) ÷ 3)

    The ledger rounds each time factor to six decimals and each segment's weighted pay to cents before the final whole-dollar high-3, matching the published Chapter 50 worksheet.

    Official fixture

    OPM Chapter 50 resolves to $27,320

    Load this example in the calculator. Five rate segments total exactly three OPM service years and $81,960.91 of weighted pay.

    OPM Chapter 50 high-3 worksheet example
    Rate periodAnnual rateFactorWeighted pay
    May 4–June 2, 1991$23,890.080556$1,924.48
    June 3, 1991–April 5, 1992$25,003.841667$21,044.20
    April 6–December 6, 1992$27,653.669444$18,512.13
    December 7, 1992–August 4, 1993$28,001.661111$18,511.77
    August 5, 1993–May 3, 1994$29,400.747222$21,968.33
    Total weighted pay$81,960.91

    Scope boundary

    Use certified retirement pay, not total compensation

    Locality, special rates, retained pay, and certain statutory premium payments may count. Many familiar pay-stub additions do not. When the treatment is unclear, the right input is an agency-certified annualized rate.

    Included in this calculator

    • A complete search across every entered 1,080-service-day window
    • Full-time annual retirement-creditable basic-pay rates
    • Ordinary FERS part-time service using the position's full-time annual rate
    • Confirmed breaks in service and exact excluded noncreditable intervals
    • Agency-record, personal-estimate, and projected input labels
    • OPM 30-day-month and 360-day-year service weighting
    • A visible winning-window timeline, factor ledger, and worksheet CSV
    • An agency-confirmed total-service average for an eligible benefit based on less than three years

    Stops or remains outside

    • The downstream FERS annuity, retirement eligibility, or an OPM benefit decision
    • Grade, step, locality, or retained-pay history inferred from public salary tables
    • Military pay, unused sick leave, bonuses, awards, incentives, or ordinary overtime
    • Intermittent/WAE, piecework, fee-basis, concurrent, dual, or multiple-rate payroll
    • Unresolved excess LWOP or omitted Federal service inside a timeline gap
    • Part-time disability calculations or a mixed FERS/CSRS component
    • An uncertified physician comparability allowance or disputed corrected pay
    • Storage, transmission, a government API request, or a FedUp data-platform lookup

    Canonical sources

    Personal records, public rules

    The rules can be implemented locally. The missing facts are personal dates and retirement-creditable pay rates, so a public data feed would add false confidence rather than accuracy.

    Sources last reviewed ; the cited eCFR provisions were checked through July 20, 2026. Reverify by July 1, 2027 or sooner after a rule change.

    Questions

    FERS high-3 FAQ

    How do I calculate my FERS high-3?

    Find the largest annual result from averaging retirement-creditable rates of basic pay over any three consecutive service years, weighting each rate by how long it applied. This tool searches the complete entered history and shows the OPM-style factors. It does not simply choose the three highest annual salaries.

    Does locality pay count in a FERS high-3?

    Yes, an applicable locality payment is generally retirement-creditable basic pay. Use the annual retirement-creditable rate shown by your agency record. Do not add a current locality percentage to an old base salary unless that reconstructs the actual certified historical rate.

    Do overtime, bonuses, or awards count?

    Ordinary overtime, bonuses, awards, recruitment or retention incentives, holiday and Sunday premium pay, and most allowances do not count. Some specifically authorized pay—such as qualifying LEAP, AUO, standby, firefighter, special-rate, retained-pay, or Title 38 market pay—can count when your agency treats it as retirement-creditable basic pay.

    Does a break in Federal service reset the high-3?

    No. Separate periods of creditable civilian service can be joined, provided there is no omitted intervening Federal service. The calculator removes a confirmed calendar break from service time and keeps both contributing date spans visible.

    How is part-time work handled?

    For ordinary FERS part-time service, high-3 uses the full-time annual rate that would apply to the position. The later annuity calculation separately prorates part-time service. Part-time disability and irregular or intermittent schedules need different records and stop here.

    Can the calculator estimate future pay?

    Yes, a row can be labeled projected. The engine applies the same arithmetic but marks the result as a projection. It does not infer future across-the-board, locality, step, promotion, or retained-pay changes.

    What if I have less than three years of service?

    A normal high-3 needs three service years. Federal law uses a total-service average only when an eligible FERS benefit is actually based on less than three years, such as certain disability or survivor cases. The calculator requires that path to be agency-confirmed and labels the result differently.

    Is this calculator official, and are my entries stored?

    No. FedUp.work independently applies published rules for planning; your agency and OPM control the official rate and benefit. Calculation happens in this browser, entries are not stored or transmitted, and no live government or FedUp data-platform request is made.

    Continue the worksheet

    Use the result in the right next tool

    FERS retirement calculatorUse the completed high-3 with service and retirement-path facts to estimate the separate annuity.GS pay calculatorCheck official current GS pay by grade, step, and locality without treating it as a personal historical record.Federal service computation date calculatorReconcile SCD-Leave separately; it is not a substitute for the high-3 service history.Federal retirement transition guidePlace pension planning alongside insurance, TSP, and the decision to leave Federal service.

    Planning what comes after Federal service?

    Pair the benefits worksheet with a real career option set

    FedUp.work helps translate Federal experience into private-sector roles, so your retirement numbers can sit beside concrete transition choices.

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