Given that the $15-per-hour minimum wage is applicable for all government contractors, when will that be applied to the military? Fifteen dollars an hour works out to about $31,200 annually. Currently, it takes a member of the military reaching pay grade E-4 — three promotions — with four years of service to make that kind of scratch.
A new enlistee currently makes just over $1,600 a month, or $19,227 annually. If you make the bold assumption that new recruits have a 40-hour work week, that puts them in at just under $9.25 an hour. Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, to stay competitive with the civilian workforce, a new recruit’s pay will have to increase over 60 percent. While the Department of Defense budget is massive, it is not so massive that it can easily absorb the associated rise in personnel costs.--
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