- A new Pentagon report said its troops earn more than most of their full-time civilian counterparts.
- It said that after one year of service, the top 70th percentile of enlisted earners get about $1,000 a week.
- But that figure includes far more than base pay, which Congress recently voted to raise significantly.
A Pentagon report said its troops often earn more than their civilian counterparts and would stand to lose out if they were to leave the service.
“Our military compensation package is strongly competitive with the civilian labor market,” it wrote in its review for military compensation, which is released every four years.
The report comes just a month after Congress voted to raise basic pay for US troops by 4.5% across the board, citing concerns about recruitment difficulties and food insecurity among soldiers. Junior enlisted troops, who hold rank equivalents of E-1 to E-4, received an even bigger raise of 14.5%.
Many of these troops were earning less than $30,000 a year in basic pay, and the bill passed in December aimed to raise their salaries to that level.
However, the Pentagon uses a different metric that extends beyond basic pay, which it calls regular military compensation. This includes benefits such as tax advantages and housing and food allowances.
By that measure, the Defense Department’s new report found that “military pay among Junior Enlisted Personnel is higher than 90th percentile of earnings for civilians with similar education and experience.”
“Basic pay is a blunt and costly instrument,” the report said. “And should be used only when there are system-wide problems, such as widespread retention and recruiting shortfalls, which cannot be solved more efficiently with other policy instruments.”
Its findings relied largely on a benchmark that compared two things: the 70th percentile of compensation for enlisted soldiers and the 70th percentile earnings for full-time civilian workers with the same education.
The report said that for enlisted soldiers with one year of service, the top 70th percentile received about $1,000 a week in regular military compensation.
Meanwhile, the report listed the 70th percentile of civilian earners as needing 10 years of work experience to get $1,000 a week.
The Pentagon said that for enlisted soldiers with 10 years of service, the top 70th percentile of earners gets $1,500 a week.
On the other hand, the 70th percentile of officer earnings stands at $1,500 a week for those with one year of service, going up to nearly $2,500 a week for those with 10 years of service.
It compared those earnings to the 70th percentile of civilians with college degrees, whom the report said consistently earn about $200 to $300 less a week.
Overall, the report said that enlisted personnel earn more than 83 out of 100 civilian workers with the same education and experience, and officers earn more than 76 out of 100 civilian workers with the same background.
The Pentagon mostly recommended “quality-of-life” improvements instead of a pay bump. It asked the military to look more into expanding its retirement savings programs, providing better childcare access for serving parents, and asking its personnel to move less often to avoid hurting the careers of soldiers’ spouses.
In its budget overview for the 2025 financial year ending September 30, the Defense Department said troop pay and benefits make up about 30% of its total budget request for $850 billion.
In the new report, the Pentagon said its current pay structure is mostly working.
“Recent retention is strong, recruiting has significantly improved, and favorable comparisons between military and civilian pay suggests that levels of basic pay are more than adequate,” it said.
