The CBO also designed and considered a new system for adjusting basic pay called the alternative wage index, which it said would be tailored to the age and education level of military personnel. If all elements of regular cash pay had started being adjusted in 2004, the CBO said, the military would have spent about $4 billion less in 2020 alone. If the ECI had been used instead, housing allowances for enlisted troops at the E-4 paygrade would have been 9% lower in 2020 than they actually wound up being. The CBO study found housing allowances grew faster than the employment cost index between 20. If this method were adopted in future years, it said, the military could save about $3 billion annually, or 1.7% of its annual cash pay and expenses costs, by 2030. The CBO has suggested adjusting all service members' cash payment raises using the ECI benchmark. But over roughly that same time period total personnel costs grew by 110%, driven in part by a rising ratio of officers to enlisted personnel, military pay raises over the employment cost index amount, and significant increases in housing allowances. The active-duty military hit its post-World War II end strength peak in fiscal 1952, CSIS said, then fell by 64% to its lowest point in fiscal 2016.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies also raised concerns about military compensation costs in its own report released Thursday. 'DoD might be able to pay less and still reach its personnel goals, while possibly meeting other objectives, such as procuring weapons.' 'These data raise questions about whether DoD is paying more for its personnel than is necessary to meet goals,' the report said. The Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the ECI using its National Compensation Survey of employers' payrolls, measuring how much compensation has shifted in the U.S.

The military spent about $160 billion on cash pay and benefits for service members in 2020, amounting to roughly a quarter of its $630 billion base budget. The military has, by and large, been successful at bringing in high-quality new recruits in recent years. The CBO said cash pay - basic pay plus food and housing allowances - for enlisted personnel was at about the 90th percentile of civilians with similar levels of experience and some college education in 2018.

Read Next: Pentagon 9/11 Attack Survivors Grappled With Wounds that Defined an Era of Warīut military compensation now greatly exceeds that. The Pentagon's goal was for troops to be paid at the 70th percentile of earnings for comparable civilians, meaning 30% of civilians in similar jobs would earn more than troops.

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