Join straight out of high school, get trained and paid from day one, and sign away several years of your choices to do it.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Specialist, 4 years
$38,452
Private, first year
$25,297
Staff Sergeant, 8 years
$53,327
There is no wage survey for this job, because the armed forces are outside it. Pay comes from the Department of Defense basic pay table, set by Congress, and it depends only on your rank and your years of service. Two people doing completely different jobs in different branches are paid exactly the same. These are 2025 Army figures for basic pay alone, before allowances.
Roughly $21,000 and $5,600 a year
Example figures for a married junior soldier at one Army post
The Basic Allowance for Housing depends on your rank, your duty station and whether you have dependents, so it varies enormously between a base in rural Missouri and one in San Diego. The Basic Allowance for Subsistence covers food. Neither is taxed, which is why take-home pay is larger than the basic pay number suggests.
Up to $10,000 in the first year
For certain jobs and certain ship dates
Bonuses are a recruiting tool, not a salary. They are attached to specific jobs the service is short of, they are taxed, they are paid out over time, and you owe them back if you do not finish your contract. Get the amount and the conditions in writing before you sign.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
There is no tuition and nothing to buy. Training is provided, uniforms and equipment are issued with an annual clothing allowance, health care carries no premium for you, and you are paid from your first day. College afterwards is covered by the veterans' education benefit, which pays tuition and a housing stipend, and there is tuition assistance for courses taken while you are still serving. The cost here is not money: this is the only career on the site that you cannot simply resign from.
This is one of the very few routes in the country where the training is free, you are paid from the first day, and there is an education benefit waiting at the end. It is also the only one where you cannot resign.
30 days of paid leave a year
Earned at two and a half days a month, from your first month.
Pension after 20 years
Serve 20 years and you draw a pension for life, starting immediately, even if you leave in your late thirties. There is also a retirement savings plan with matching contributions.
Home loans
Veterans' home loans need no down payment and no mortgage insurance, which is a serious advantage in your twenties.
Trade and technical training
Mechanics, electricians, medics, cooks, air traffic controllers, cyber operators. You are taught a job, for free, in months.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
The fastest route to a trained, paid job of anything on this site. It can start the summer after high school.
High school diploma
Grade 12
A diploma is the standard requirement across the branches. Stay out of legal trouble and get reasonably fit before you apply.
Talk to a recruiter and take the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery)
Weeks
This test decides whether you qualify and, just as importantly, which jobs you are allowed to pick.
Medical exam and contract
A few days
At a Military Entrance Processing Station you are examined, screened and then sign a contract naming your job and your term of service.
Basic training
2 to 3 months
Roughly 8 to 13 weeks depending on the branch. Fitness, weapons, drill and the transition to military life.
Job school
1 month to 2 years
Technical training in your specialty. A few weeks for some jobs, more than a year for languages, nuclear work or advanced electronics.
First unit
Ongoing
You arrive at your assigned base or ship as a qualified junior member and start doing the job for real.
Math
The entrance test is heavily arithmetic and reasoning, and your score decides which jobs open.
Science and electronics
The best paid and most transferable specialties are technical ones, and they have higher score requirements.
Physical education
There is a fitness standard to enter and a fitness test for the rest of your career.
A second language
Language jobs are sought after, come with extra pay, and lead to some of the most interesting work in the services.
You are not licensed, but you are bound. A standard enlistment runs four to six years of active duty plus a reserve obligation after it, and you cannot give two weeks notice. Where you live, what you do and when you move are decided for you, and you will normally change duty stations every two to three years. Military law applies to you on top of civilian law. None of that is hidden, but it is the single biggest difference between this and every other career on this site, so read the contract properly and take it home before you sign it.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Technical and cyber jobs
Electronics, networks, intelligence and cyber operations carry the best civilian value when you leave.
Medical specialties
Combat medic and hospital corpsman training is a genuine shortcut into civilian health care afterwards.
Aviation maintenance
Aircraft mechanics leave with skills airlines and manufacturers hire straight away.
Language training
The military runs its own language institute, and graduates leave fluent in languages that take civilians years.
Special operations selection
Very hard, voluntary, extra pay, and a completely different life from the rest of the force.
Be fit before you go
Basic training is easier on people who arrive able to run and do push-ups. It is a small amount of preparation for a big difference.
A clean record
Some legal and medical history needs a waiver, and waivers get harder when recruiting is strong.
Talk to people who served
Recruiters are salespeople. Someone three years out will tell you the parts that are not on the poster.
Credit and paperwork in order
Security clearances for the better jobs look at your finances and your honesty.
Officers are managers and planners and need a bachelor's degree before they start. Enlisted members are the people who operate, maintain and lead the work, and need a high school diploma. Enlisted pay starts lower and the pay tables are separate. You can cross over later: several programs will send a serving enlisted member to college and commission them as an officer afterwards, and having done the job first is generally respected. If you want to serve and you have a degree already, look at the officer route instead.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Physical training early, often before sunrise, with your unit. Then your actual job, which might be maintaining an aircraft, running a network, driving, cooking, loading ships or treating patients, in a workplace that happens to be a base. Formations, inspections and training days interrupt it. Some months are routine and repetitive. Then there is a field exercise or a deployment and the routine disappears for weeks or months, you live where you are told and the work does not stop at five.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Congress sets one basic pay table for all six branches. A Navy sailor, an Air Force technician and a Marine at the same rank with the same years of service earn identical basic pay, no matter how different their jobs are.
Housing and food allowances are paid on top of basic pay and are not subject to income tax. That is why a junior service member's real spending power is higher than their salary figure looks next to a civilian job.
The ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) does more than decide whether you are accepted. Its sub-scores decide which specialties you may choose, so a stronger score is the difference between a job with civilian value and a job without one.
Twenty years of service earns a pension paid from the day you leave, not from age 65. Enlist at 18, serve 20 years, and you can start a second career at 38 with a monthly check already arriving.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.