Federal Classification Systems
Welcome to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management electronic reading room for position
classification policy. Our documents may be used to classify work performed by Federal positions that are
covered by Title 5 United States Code.
- White collar occupations are covered by the General Schedule (GS)
, and
- Blue collar occupations are covered by the Federal Wage System (FWS).
Our library includes documents that provide:
- General information about the classification of these positions,
- Brief definitions of the occupations identified in these classification systems,
- General Schedule position classification standards,
- Federal Wage System job grading standards, and
- Links to information on filing a classification appeal.
Our documents are provided in Acrobat Reader and HTML formats. Many of our older standards are still available
in Wordperfect format; however, we recommend that you use the Acrobat Reader version
if possible. The links to our standards include icons like the ones shown below.
| Icon Key
|
Adobe Acrobat PDF Version
|
WordPerfect for Windows, 5.1 Version
|
HTML Version
|
NOTE ABOUT ACCESSIBILITY: After June 21, 2001, we began providing newly issued Federal classification documents on our Web site in an accessible format to meet the requirements of
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998 (29 U.S.C. 794) and the
accessibility standards issued by the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board. Although the accessible format is HTML and conveys the content of the documents, it does not necessarily replicate the layout and appearance. Since many of our documents contain more than 50 pages, we created more manageable HTML files by separating the documents into several individual files. These files have links that connect all the sections, with headings at the top of the first page of each section that tell you which section
you are in. Therefore, if you want to download the HTML version, you will need to download each section separately. You can do this by using the "Save As" feature after you open the section. The link from this page will take you to a table of contents for the document you have selected that will
also allow you to access the other sections.
Forward questions or feedback concerning the Classification Standards to:
fedclass@opm.gov.
