ICYMI: Junior Enlisted Could See a 19.5 Percent Pay Raise
By Luther Ray Abel
May 24, 2024 National Review
The FY25 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) made it out of the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday night, and there are some really attractive bits in there if one is junior enlisted or looking to join up. Quality of life for servicemembers, a bipartisan interest in a Congress as closely divided as the 118th, is the focus of the NDAA, and it’s about time. Dilapidated barracks with mold and other infestations, military families requiring food stamps to get by, and a basic-needs allowance program for which needy families successfully qualified for 0.8 percent of the time have been embarrassing episodes for the armed services that are not well-equipped to manage things that aren’t materiel.
Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R., Ala.) summarized the bill for National Review: In the FY25 NDAA, we’re giving junior enlisted servicemembers a 19.5% pay raise; improving unaccompanied housing; expanding access to specialty medical providers; boosting access to childcare; and providing support for military spouses seeking employment.
The most eye-catching figure in the NDAA is the 20 percent pay increase for personnel E-1 to E-4 — those in the lower ranks who’ve been enlisted somewhere between a few days and several years (a plurality of the military). If not factoring in room and board, these servicemembers make between $24,000 and $36,000. For a single guy living in the barracks, he can make it work. But for a soldier with a family and a place off-base, $30k is tight. While there are no doubt some salts who point out that if the Navy wanted a sailor to have a wife, they’d have issued him with one, the reality is that beggars can’t be choosers with such a profound recruitment deficit. A bit of extra scratch does best by junior enlisted, who see the least positive effect from the year-over-year flat-percentage increases to military pay.
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It’s good that Congress has taken the years of junior enlisted complaints and bundled them into a bill that looks to palliate the most disagreeable aspects. We need volunteers, and it’s in the national self-interest to look after those volunteers. One cannot sail, fly, or consume paper-covered wax tubes without manpower, after all.
