What are the highest paid government contract labor categories?
Subject Matter Expert III is the highest paid common labor category on GSA Schedule contracts, with a median published rate of $220 per hour across 893 awarded rates.
Source: The Federal Labor Rate Benchmark, BidSparq
Data as of: October 5, 2026 (refreshed weekly)
Sample: 369,935 published GSA Schedule labor rates; categories with 100+ rates ranked
License: free to cite with attribution to BidSparq
Verify this yourself: GSA CALC+ (the Contract-Awarded Labor Category tool that publishes every GSA Schedule labor rate).
Essential statistics
- #1: Subject Matter Expert III, median $220 per hour, middle half $176 per hour to $273 per hour (893 rates).
- #2: Subject Matter Expert, median $202 per hour, middle half $160 per hour to $246 per hour (1,125 rates).
- #3: Subject Matter Expert II, median $194 per hour, middle half $154 per hour to $240 per hour (1,094 rates).
- #4: Program Manager III, median $189 per hour, middle half $159 per hour to $230 per hour (470 rates).
- #5: Senior Consultant, median $180 per hour, middle half $151 per hour to $228 per hour (532 rates).
What this means
Only categories with at least 100 published rates are ranked, so one-off specialist listings cannot distort the results. Senior advisory roles top the list because agencies buy them in small quantities at expert rates, while delivery roles price closer to the schedule-wide median of $124 per hour.
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