Service Members’ Perceptions of Their Compensation

Service Members’ Perceptions of Their Compensation

• Our focus group findings and DOD survey results on compensation suggest that a culture of dissatisfaction and misunderstanding about compensation exists among service members. For example, our results showed that

  • Almost 80 percent of service members in our focus group survey believed they are paid less than their civilian counterparts; in contrast, a recent DOD review found that, on average, military pay was at the 70th percentile or higher of civilian wages.1
  • About 44 percent of the service members in our focus group survey reported they were still dissatisfied with basic pay, despite an average increase of about 23 percent from fiscal years 2000 to 2004.

• Service members were more satisfied (47 percent satisfied; 28 percent dissatisfied) with their cash compensation as a whole than they were with specific aspects like basic pay, housing allowance, or subsistence allowance.

• Service members’ appear to prefer cash compensation: in almost all 40 focus group sessions, service members were willing to decrease their noncash benefits to increase their cash compensation.