Comparing national numeric and other numeric operands

National numeric operands (national decimal and national floating-point operands) are data items of class numeric that have USAGE NATIONAL.

You can compare the algebraic values of numeric operands regardless of their USAGE. Thus you can compare a national decimal item or a national floating-point item with a binary item, an internal-decimal item, a zoned decimal item, a display floating-point item, or any other numeric item.

related references  
General relation conditions (Enterprise COBOL for z/OS® Language Reference)