US Military: Target, Google Amazon Are "Competition" For Recruitment, Willing to Offer Between $25K to $100K to Keep War Machine Going.

Back in 2018, Brookings had am article title, "How the U.S. Military Became the Exception to America's Wage Stagnation Problem." It referenced a (then) recent report from the Council of Foreign Relations that highlighted (among other things) that, "Over 60 percent of 2016 enlistments came from neighborhoods with a median household income between $38,345 and $80,912" before revealing that between 2000 and 2011, and E5 paygrade went from 10% under the median American to 10% more. For a variety of reasons, the middle class was the US military. The article, however, warned that this could be more of a phase than a permanent shift:

The temptation for future defense budgets will be to neglect military compensation increases and regress to the historical pay gap as personnel expenditures currently encapsulate one-third of the defense budget. But, the Department of Defense (DOD) must keep an eye on the horizon and proactively anticipate and act on civilian sector economics and public policy changes. The regional implementation of tuition-free college (as instituted in Tennessee), increasing momentum behind “Medicare-for-all,” and increasing civilian wages would dramatically affect the middle class, and therefore the pool of military recruits. The Pentagon got a head start over the last decade recruiting and retaining a high-caliber team despite nearly full employment. That advantage won’t last forever.

The 2018 National Defense Strategy recognized that “the security environment is also affected by rapid technological advancements and the changing character of war” and “the drive to develop new technologies is relentless.” The modern military is competing with the private sector for skilled labor and technological savvy. If properly nurtured and maintained, the inversion of the civil-military pay gap enables the recruitment and retention of high capability talent. The DOD should take advantage of these national economic trends to improve the capability as well as capacity of the force.

Despite this warning, Brookings seems to miss an obvious solution for the military to "stay ahead of the Joneses:"

Nobody should join or remain on active duty for financial reasons. As Reeves points out, the sluggish increase in middle-class growth is a significant problem in America. But it may create an opportunity for the DOD to build a more skilled and competitive force.  Ironically, the men and women in uniform are some of the few members of the middle class capable of achieving the American dream they have sworn to defend.

Apparently the military took this advice of not focusing on employee pay, because in 2019 the story was about how diverse the military has become:

In 2017, there were roughly 1.34 million men and women serving on active duty. This number is down from a recent high of 1.46 million in 2010 and down substantially from more than 2 million active duty service members in 1990.

In 2017, women represented 16% of the overall active duty force, up from 9% in 1980 and just 1% in 1970.

The percentage of officers who are women has steadily grown since the 1970s. For example, in 1975, 5% of commissioned officers were women, and, by 2017, that share had risen to 18%.

A look at the racial and ethnic profile of active duty service members shows that while the majority of the military is non-Hispanic white, black and Hispanic adults represent sizable and growing shares of the armed forces. In 2017, 57% of U.S. servicemembers were white, 16% were black and 16% were Hispanic. Some 4% of all active duty personnel were Asian and an additional 6% identified as “other” or unknown.

No wonder there are more ads touting military diversity, huh?

Fast forward to May 2022, where in the aftermath of COVID-19, the "telework rebellion," The Great Resignation and events like the Russia-Ukraine war and inflation, highlighting diversity isn't enough anymore:

Hints that the armed services might soon face a problem keeping their ranks full began quietly, with officials spending the last decade warning that a dwindling slice of the American public could serve.

Only about one-quarter of young Americans are even eligible for service these days, a shrinking pool limited by an increasing number of potential recruits who are overweight or are screened out due to minor criminal infractions, including the use of recreational drugs such as marijuana.

But what had been a slow-moving trend is reaching crisis levels, as a highly competitive job market converges with a mass of troops leaving as the coronavirus pandemic subsides, alarming military planners.

"Not two years into a pandemic, and we have warning lights flashing," Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, the Air Force Recruiting Service commander, wrote in a memo -- leaked in January -- about the headwinds his team faces.

[SNIP]

In an interview with Military.com last month, Thomas didn't mince words. He knows he is competing against the private sector to hire people, from technology giants to regional gas stations.

"If you want to work at Buc-ee's along I-35 in Texas, you can do it for [a] $25-an-hour starting salary," Thomas said. "You can start at Target for $29 an hour with educational benefits. So you start looking at the competition: Starbucks, Google, Amazon. The battle for talent amidst this current labor shortage is intense."

[SNIP]

Payouts aimed at attracting new service members to replace those outgoing veterans are at all-time highs. The Army started offering recruiting bonuses of up to $50,000 in January, and last month the Air Force began promoting up to $50,000 -- the most it can legally offer -- for certain career fields.

The Navy followed with its offer of $25,000 to those willing to ship out in a matter of weeks. It says the bonuses are the result of an "unprecedentedly competitive job market."

Cmdr. Dave Benham, a spokesman for the sea service's recruiting command, told Military.com in a recent phone interview that "the private sector is doing things we haven't seen them do before to try and attract talent, so we have to stay competitive."

Benham said the scope of the Navy's offer -- a minimum of $25,000 to ship out before June -- has "never happened before to anybody's collective knowledge around here."

[SNIP]

The pandemic economy has placed private-sector workers in the driver's seat, pushing employers to offer more lucrative incentives such as better benefits, flexible work-from-home schedules or massive signing bonuses to make hires. That is putting major pressure on the military as it tries to attract recruits who may be considering the civilian job market.

[SNIP]

The bonuses that serve as one of the most immediately tangible lures for new recruits, while escalating, aren't uniform across or even within the services.

Most of the bonuses offered for new Air Force recruits range around $8,000 for certain career fields. But for two of the most dangerous jobs, Special Warfare operations and explosive ordnance disposal, the service is making its maximum allowed offer of $50,000 for people to join.

"It is necessary. I think these are two of our hardest career fields to recruit toward," said Col. Jason Scott, chief of operations for the Air Force Recruiting Service. "It is absolutely necessary to do $50,000 for each of those, and actually $50,000 is the highest initial enlistment bonus amount that we can give."

Overall, the Air Force is dedicating $31 million to recruiting bonuses in 2022, nearly double what was originally planned for.

The Army faces the same problem -- and is putting up the same big offers.

"We're in a search for talent just like corporate America and other businesses; almost everyone has the same issue the military does right now," Maj. Gen. Kevin Vereen, head of U.S. Army Recruiting Command, told Military.com. "We're trying to match incentives for what resonates. For example, financial incentives. Nobody wants to be in debt, so we're offering sign-up bonuses at a historic rate.

"We've never offered $50,000 to join the Army," he added.

[SNIP]

The Army, Air Force and Navy have all announced reenlistment bonuses for certain career fields and specialties, some of them in the six-figure range.

The Air Force is offering up to $100,000 reenlistment bonuses based on experience and career field. The Navy is also offering those incentives, with fields such as network cryptologists and nuclear technicians making anywhere from $90,000 to $100,000. The Army is offering a more modest cap of $81,000 to reenlist for some jobs.

[SNIP]

U.S. population demographics are going in the wrong direction and will make the recruiting job increasingly hard. The millennial and Gen-Z generations are smaller than previous generations, meaning there is a dwindling workforce to pull from. And only a small percentage of those youths appear likely to meet the physical qualifications to join in the first place.

"I think it's likely that the labor shortage is going to be long-lasting," Von Nessen said. "This is not a short-term phenomenon. It was exacerbated by the pandemic, but it wasn't created by the pandemic exclusively."

Now in light of this, I believe that the working class and the labor movement have a unique opportunity to put the idea of a General Strike front and center. People have talked about strikes in various private sector industries: trucking, snack food warehouses, Amazon, Starbucks, etc., but apparently the idea of a strike from the military is either too taboo or not considered realistic. But we have the information here: people over the last few decades have chosen the military not out of sense of patriotism (like say, immediately after 9/11) but because they were the best paying option. The military understands that other markets -specifically retail- is basically stealing their potential labor pool. This same group (retail) is currently experiencing a union renaissance the likes we haven't seen in years (and hopefully will continue for years), mainly due to finances. 

Meanwhile, politically, the mask of patriotism has fallen off of the military. They would be hard pressed to experience another high recruitment drive short of another Pearl Harbor or 9/11 scenario, and thanks to social media people would be way more skeptical even if something like that happened.  

(Not to mention that, depending on who you ask, Generation Z is either enjoying the new job market or are already burned out.) 

But if people, especially the poor, working class and middle class, were to forgo the military as a job option altogether? There are no amount of drones and robot dogs that can compensate for the lack of using real people in combat situations. And with robust mutual aid programs helping them and others like them financially afloat, American labor will finally be in a position to force a seat at the table.

In short: let's try to add the military to the General Strike push, and see what happens if "work" as we know it changed.