Trump’s False Claims About Military Pay Raises and Recruitment

[Thiệu Ngô]

In a Sept. 30 address to military leaders and an Oct. 9 Cabinet meeting, President Donald Trump made false claims about military pay raises and recruitment.

By Andrew Noh


Trump promoted a military pay raise of 3.8% for next year, claiming that this was “something you weren’t getting from the past administration.” Military wages rose by at least 4.5% in each of the past three years under his predecessor. Next year’s raise also was determined by a formula set by law.

Trump touted fiscal year 2025 recruitment and falsely claimed that “one year ago” news stories said “we couldn’t get anybody to join” the military. Nearly all military branches met their recruitment goals in FY 2024, as recruitment began recovering from pandemic-era lows.

Military Pay Raises

During Sept. 30 remarks addressing military leadership, Trump announced “a hard-earned pay raise of 3.8% to every soldier, sailor, airman, Coast Guardsman, Space Guardsmen and Marines,” falsely claiming such a raise was “something you weren’t getting from the past administration.” Trump added: “They did not treat you with respect.”

Despite Trump’s claim, the 2026 pay raise falls short of recent years, as military pay increased by 4.6%, 5.2% and 4.5% in 2023, 2024 and 2025, respectively. Military raises are automatically determined by a formula set by law. The president can propose a different figure, which Congress can agree to or override.

The 3.8% pay raise for 2026 is included in both the Senate and House versions of the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA serves as the basis for the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, which is stalled in the Senate amid the government shutdown.

As we have written before, federal law mandates that military pay raises be equal to the change in the Labor Department’s annual Employment Cost Index, or ECI, that measures the increase in private sector wages. However, as the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service explains, the president can propose a higher or lower pay raise, and Congress can set the figure in legislation, overriding the automatic increase or a presidential proposal if the legislation becomes law.

According to the Office of Military Compensation and Financial Readiness, the September ECI figures, which are released in October, are “used to determine the pay raise for the next fiscal year.” The federal government’s fiscal year is from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. This means that when the September ECI figure comes out later this month, it will determine the 2027 military pay raise. The pay raises take effect on Jan. 1 each year.

Trump followed the legal formula in his FY 2026 discretionary budget request, which proposed a 3.8% military pay raise. The budget request appendix notes that the figure “is equal to the increase in the Employment Cost Index.”

During President Joe Biden’s term, he proposed military wage increases of 2.7%, 4.6%, 5.2% and 4.5% for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. These raises exactly corresponded to the September ECI figures in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, and weren’t changed by Congress.

Similarly, during Trump’s first term, he proposed military wage increases of 2.6%, 3.1% and 3% for 2019, 2020 and 2021, which matched the ECI figures and weren’t changed by Congress. However, for 2018, Trump requested a 2.1% raise even though the ECI would have automatically set the raise at 2.4%. Despite Trump’s request, Congress approved a 2.4% raise in the FY 2018 NDAA.

Recruitment

During a Cabinet meeting on Oct. 9, Trump repeated a claim we’ve written about before regarding military recruitment.

Trump touted “record numbers of recruitment” in fiscal year 2025 and falsely claimed that “one year ago, there were stories, front page stories that we couldn’t get anybody to join” the military, calling it “embarrassing.” Trump also said that he thought the increase in recruitment “all started on Nov. 5,” when he was elected president.

It remains to be seen whether FY 2025 will set a “record” for military recruitment, as we only have data through August and the fiscal year runs through September. But the figures for active-duty armed forces recruits were slightly higher over the same period in FY 2019.

Regardless, FY 2025 recruitment has been robust and has recovered following shortfalls caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force reached their recruiting goals at least three months early, while the Marines met its recruitment goal by the end of the fiscal year, on Sept. 30. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll attributed the Army’s impressive recruiting numbers to “a resurgence of pride in our country” and a generation “inspired by purpose and patriotism.”

But the recruitment turnaround started before the election. Every military branch, except for the Navy, which improved its recruiting rate, also reached recruiting goals for FY 2024. The Defense Department announced at the end of October last year that it had recruited 12.5% more people in fiscal 2024 than it had in 2023.

Contrary to Trump’s claim that front page stories a year ago stated that “we couldn’t get anybody to join” the military, one news story from October 2024 reported that “after years of shortfalls, nearly all of the U.S. military’s active-duty components met their recruiting goals this year—and plan to increase those goals in 2025.” While other articles noted “tough challenges” to recruiting in the future, they said that nearly all military branches reached their FY 2024 recruiting goals.

According to the Department of Defense, FY 2023 “was without a doubt the toughest recruitment year for the Military Services since the inception of the All-volunteer Force.” That year, only the Marines and Space Force were able to meet their recruitment goals, while the Army, Navy and Air Force were only able to recruit about 77%, 80% and 89% of their annual goals, respectively.

The Center for Naval Analyses explains that military recruiting was hampered by the pandemic, as recruiters typically “maximize the chances of meeting their monthly targets” by going to “high-traffic locations such as malls or organized events at schools.” As pandemic restrictions closed these venues, it became harder for the military to meet prospective recruits.

Also, the Hoover Institution describes how several factors, including a strong economy and reduced enthusiasm for military service among American youth, have increasingly hindered military recruitment. The Department of Defense’s Office of People Analytics found in May 2023 that only 23% of American youth aged 17-24 are eligible to enlist in the military without a waiver due to a variety of reasons, including being overweight, medical/physical issues or drug abuse.

In an April commentary piece, Beth J. Asch, a senior principal economist at RAND, said that the military turned to “new marketing and advertising campaigns,” “programs aimed at increasing enlistment eligibility, such as the Future Soldier Prep Courses,” and the increased use of waivers. The Future Soldier Prep Courses expanded the pool of qualified recruits by training potential soldiers to improve their physical and academic skills before entering basic training.

Asch noted that while “some have speculated that the improvement in recruiting is linked to the election … no rigorous statistical analysis has yet been conducted to assess the impact of the election or other factors on recruiting outcomes.”