Staff members in the Professional and higher categories are recruited internationally and
are paid on the basis of salary scales applied worldwide, and established by the General
Assembly of the United Nations on the recommendation of ICSC. A common job classification
system developed by ICSC provides the structure for this salary scale.
The salary of staff in the Professional and higher categories is made up of two main
elements: a base or floor (minimum) salary and post adjustment, both expressed in United States
dollars. Post adjustment is a cost-of-living adjustment designed to preserve equivalent purchasing
power for all duty stations.
The Professional and higher categories comprise five Professional grades (P-1 to P-5), two
Director levels (D-1 and D-2), as well as the levels of Assistant Secretary-General and Under Secretary-General
in some organizations and Assistant Director-General and Deputy DirectorGeneral
in others. The scale, expressed as gross and net base salaries, is applied uniformly, worldwide, by all
organizations in the common system.
General Service & Related Categories
Pursuant to article 11 (a) of its statute, ICSC establishes and reviews both headquarters methodology and non-headquarters methodology for surveys of best prevailing conditions of employment of General Service and other related categories.
While it is also responsible for conducting surveys at headquarters locations, i.e. Geneva, Madrid, Montreal, London, New York, Paris, Rome, Vienna and Kingston, neither the Commission nor its secretariat are actively involved in any operational aspects of non-headquarters surveys, the overall responsibility for which is assigned to the organizations. The United Nations conducts all of the non-headquarters salary surveys and is also responsible for the promulgation of all local salary scales.
The Chair of the Commission is delegated the authority to determine the categorization of new duty stations and to make decisions on the categorization of existing duty stations.
