BPS Pay Scales Explained: What BPS-1 to BPS-22 Mean

BPS stands for Basic Pay Scale. Civil posts in the federal and provincial governments are graded from BPS-1, the most junior, to BPS-22, the most senior. You may also see it written as BS-17 or Grade 17 - it is the same thing.

Each scale is a range, not a single figure: a starting basic pay, a fixed annual increment, and a maximum. A new appointee normally starts at the bottom of the scale and moves up by one increment each year until the maximum is reached.

Basic pay is not your total salary. Allowances are added on top - house rent, medical and conveyance among them - and they vary by government, by city and by department. That is why two posts in the same scale can pay different amounts in hand.

The grade a post carries depends on the department and its service rules, so these are patterns rather than rules. They are the same bands the job filters on this site use.

• BPS-1 to 5 - support posts: naib qasid, chowkidar, mali, sweeper and similar.
• BPS-6 to 10 - clerical and technical posts, including many drivers and junior technical staff.
• BPS-11 to 15 - senior clerical, assistant and supervisory posts such as junior clerk, assistant and stenotypist.
• BPS-16 and 17 - officer posts at graduate entry. BPS-17 is the usual entry grade for graduate officer posts, many of them filled through a public service commission - though commissions recruit for lower grades too.
• BPS-18 and 19 - senior officer posts, mostly reached by promotion, though some are advertised for direct recruitment.
• BPS-20 to 22 - senior management.

Many advertisements - especially for projects, regulators, public companies and universities - use their own scales instead: PPS, SPPS, MP, OG and others, or simply a fixed monthly amount. These are set by the employer or the project and do not convert one-to-one into BPS. For these posts the advertisement's own pay figure, or the employer's published scale, is the only reliable guide.

The federal government revises its pay scales through the Finance Division, usually around the budget, and each province issues its own. A pay chart from a previous year is out of date as soon as a revision is announced, which is why this site shows the scale a post carries rather than a salary it may no longer pay. When pay matters to your decision, check the current circular of the government concerned.

Rules differ between commissions, departments and testing services, and they are revised. The advertisement for the post and the instructions of the body running the recruitment are always final - where they and this guide differ, follow them.