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 $218 per hour across 804 awarded rates.
Source: The Federal Labor Rate Benchmark, BidSparq
Data as of: August 17, 2026 (refreshed weekly)
Sample: 331,614 published GSA Schedule labor rates; categories with 100+ rates ranked
License: free to cite with attribution to BidSparq
Essential statistics
- #1: Subject Matter Expert III, median $218 per hour, middle half $175 per hour to $273 per hour (804 rates).
- #2: Subject Matter Expert, median $202 per hour, middle half $160 per hour to $247 per hour (1,021 rates).
- #3: Subject Matter Expert II, median $192 per hour, middle half $154 per hour to $239 per hour (987 rates).
- #4: Program Manager III, median $190 per hour, middle half $159 per hour to $229 per hour (412 rates).
- #5: Senior Consultant, median $181 per hour, middle half $151 per hour to $228 per hour (489 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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