As pay gap narrows, DoD reviews more changes - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

As pay gap narrows, DoD reviews more changes

One of the fundamental areas of debate on the issue of pay comparability is whether a “pay gap” exists between service members and civilians.

Military associations claim it most certainly does, and for more than a decade have successfully lobbied Congress to fund above-average military pay raises to close that gap.

For 2010, for example, the Obama administration proposed a 2.9 percent military pay raise, which would have matched the rise in average private-sector wages last year. But Congress is poised to approve a 3.4 percent increase effective Jan. 1.

Military associations that track the issue say the last time average military and private-sector wages were in rough parity was in 1982. But military pay then began to lag the private sector as measured by the Labor Department’s Employment Cost Index, leading to a pay gap that widened to 13.5 percent in 1999.

But the past 10 years of above-average military pay hikes have reversed that trend and whittled the gap to 2.9 percent today, according to the Military Officers Association of America.

“Pay comparability is a fundamental underpinning of an all-volunteer force,” said retired Air Force Col. Steve Strobridge, director of government relations for MOAA. “You have to sustain that over time — in good times and bad.”But the Pentagon argues any pay gap that once may have once existed is now gone when the total value of the military benefits package is considered.

The basic yardstick for that comparison has long been what the Pentagon calls Regular Military Compensation — the combination of basic pay, housing and food allowances, and the tax advantages of those tax-free allowances.

But some analysts say RMC still falls short in gauging the value of the total compensation package. In fact, a study last year called for adopting a broader metric called Military Annual Compensation.

The new standard, still under review, would include the current RMC measure, as well as the value of military health care and retirement, and state and Social Security tax advantages.

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