Government Salary Grades: What Every Rank Earns Under the 2025 Schedule

The Department of Budget and Management set monthly pay for civilian government personnel between 14,061 and 451,713 pesos under a 33-grade schedule that took effect on 1 January 2025. The figures sit in National Budget Circular No. 597, Annex A, the second tranche of the standardized salary schedule, and they apply across agencies and local government units that follow the system.

Government Salary Grades Run From 14,061 to 451,713 Pesos

An Administrative Aide I at Salary Grade 1, step 1, earns 14,061 pesos a month. The President, at Grade 33, earns 438,844 at step 1 and 451,713 at step 2, the highest figure printed anywhere on the schedule. Everything else falls between those two numbers.

Each grade carries eight steps, and a step is a longevity increment, not a promotion. Inside Grade 19, an Engineer III moves from 56,390 pesos at step 1 to 62,089 at step 8. That’s the full range available without changing position.

Where a District Engineer and a Barangay Health Aide Land

Most Bicolanos on a government payroll sit in the lower half of the table. A Barangay Health Aide is Grade 4, at 16,833 pesos. A Carpenter I is Grade 3, at 15,852. An Agricultural Technician I is Grade 6, at 18,957.

Further up, a District Engineer sits at Grade 25 and 111,727 pesos, a city government department head at Grade 26 and 126,252, and a Trial Court Judge at Grade 27 and 142,663. A mayor is Grade 30 at 203,200, which puts a city hall’s top elected official above every technical position working under them.

The 14,061 Figure Is Gross Pay, Not Take-Home

Government salary grades set a gross monthly figure before tax, and that is all they set. Location allowances, hazard pay and other benefits sit outside the schedule, so what lands in a bank account isn’t the figure printed against the grade. Anyone checking a payslip against this table should expect the two to disagree, in either direction.

What National Budget Circular 597 Leaves Out

The schedule settles less than its detail suggests. Five things it doesn’t establish:

• Whether a third tranche has taken effect since 1 January 2025, and at what rates. The circular covers the second tranche only.
• Why Grade 11 step 1, at 30,024 pesos, sits above Grade 12 step 1, at 29,165, in the published table. The inversion is in the source data and isn’t explained there.
• How long an employee waits between steps, and what triggers the move.
• Which allowances apply in Bicol specifically, and what they add to the gross figure.
• How many positions in each Bicol province and city actually sit at each grade.

The documents that would answer these are the DBM’s succeeding budget circulars and each agency’s plantilla of personnel. Both are public, the same class of record we used to check Bicol road projects against what was promised.

Source bettergov.ph. Written from the original report.