Pay bands are a compensation system that employers use to assign salary ranges to each position in the organization. These salary scopes have many names, including pay scale, band salary, or National Occupation Classification (NOC) codes . The federal government maintains a database of NOC codes that it organizes by sector, industry, and position . Pay bands are often implemented by compressing the General Schedule’s 15 grades into four or five pay bands. These pay bands typically range from GS-1 to GS-5, GS-6 to GS-11, GS-12 to GS-13 and GS-14 to GS-15. Each pay band has a minimum and maximum pay. Within these bands, pay is based on employee performance .