Two main factors affect where you fall on the basic pay scale: your years of service and your rank, which generally corresponds with your military pay grade.
Basic pay is a service member’s primary compensation.The higher the grade level, the higher the pay.
A ‘grade’ refers to the General Schedule (GS) pay scale – it’s the pay level for the job. For example, a Nurse is part of the 0610 series. The series is a numbered system for grouping similar occupations.
