The Combat-Arms Discount
Skills trade employers are struggling to fill a talent chasm. Meanwhile about 200,000 people leave the military each year experienced in those very trades — and land well below what they were trained to do. This brief is about the distance between those two facts and the opportunity employers have who can bridge them.
- 3.2M
- Openings per year Annual openings on the skilled rung of the U.S. labor market, growth plus replacement. BLS Employment Projections, 2024–34
- 190K
- Unfilled per year Manufacturing jobs projected to go unfilled every year through 2033 — 1.9 million across the decade. Deloitte & The Manufacturing Institute, 2024 Talent Study
- 200K
- Separating per year Service members who leave the military every year, many already holding the credentials employers require. U.S. Department of Defense
The error
The number that shouldn’t exist
Here is a fact that should bother anyone who hires. The veterans who did the hardest, most dangerous jobs in the military — infantry, combat engineers, artillery crews — begin civilian life earning less than almost everyone else who served, and less than their civilian peers of the same education. Not because they are worth less. Because the market cannot read what they are worth.
Rank every Defense Department occupational group by median earnings one year after separation — the Census Bureau’s Veteran Employment Outcomes data, all branches, 2002–2021 cohorts — and the combat arms sit at the bottom of the table, near $33,000 a year.
Why the value is hard to see
Economists have a name for what happens here: employer learning. Employers hire on what they can easily verify, the visible credential, and adjust as they observe what a worker can actually do. Altonji and Pierret (1998; 2001) showed that pay comes to track real productivity over time, and that the effect is largest for workers whose ability the initial credential fails to capture. A veteran without a four-year degree is the textbook case: the capability is there, and the résumé carries no signal the screening system knows how to price. The record is written in a language civilian hiring systems do not read.
There is a lot of capability behind that signal. The people in these roles were selected before they were trained. The Pentagon estimates that roughly three in four Americans aged 17 to 24 would need a waiver to meet the standard to serve. The men and women who do serve came from the minority who qualified, then had years of training, credentialing, and real responsibility layered on top. An employer hiring a combat-arms veteran is getting a screened, trained, and proven candidate.
What it is costing
The jobs nobody can fill
The shortage is demographic at its root. The generation that fills the country’s aviation hangars, truck cabs, shipyards, and factory floors is retiring, and the training pipeline behind them is too thin to replace it. Most of these trades project near-flat employment and still generate tens of thousands of openings a year, almost entirely to replace people who leave.
Wages alone move this slowly. The roles are gated by credentials — FAA certificates, commercial driver’s licenses, welding qualifications, security clearances — and a credential can take months or even years to earn. Four sectors that anchor the economy and national security are running the same structural shortage.
Exhibit 1
Four sectors, one structural shortage
Aviation
710K
New maintenance technicians needed globally over 20 years. U.S. commercial aviation already runs short of certified mechanics, with a large share of the workforce over age 60.
Transportation
1.1M
New drivers needed over a decade, roughly 110,000 a year, while the vehicle-technician pipeline runs well short of annual demand.
Shipbuilding
174K
New workers needed over the next decade, accounting for attrition, for the shipbuilding industrial base to meet Navy goals.
Defense IB & manufacturing
3.8M
Net manufacturing workers needed through 2033, of which roughly 1.9 million could go unfilled — about 190,000 a year — many requiring security clearances that take years to obtain.
On the supply side
200K
Service members leave the military each year, many already holding the exact credentials, and for defense work, an active clearance.
Sources: Boeing, Pilot and Technician Outlook 2025–2044; ATEC, Pipeline Report; ATA, Truck Driver Shortage Analysis; TechForce Foundation; GAO-25-106286; Deloitte & The Manufacturing Institute, 2024 Talent Study.
Read the last two figures together. Manufacturing alone expects to leave roughly 190,000 jobs unfilled every year, and roughly 200,000 people leave the military every year.
Two flows, comparable in size
A statement about scale, not a one-to-one match
Manufacturing jobs projected unfilled, per year
190K
Service members separating, per year
200K
Sources: Deloitte & The Manufacturing Institute, 2024 Talent Study; U.S. Department of Defense.
Those figures are close in size, which is a statement about scale rather than a one-to-one match — not every separator is a fit for manufacturing work. It does establish that the supply is large enough to matter to the shortage.
The industries carrying the largest share of that shortfall — manufacturing, aviation maintenance, trucking, utilities, and the defense industrial base — are the same ones that overlook the group most qualified to do the work.
The proof
The talent that already matches it
Consider where a combat-arms record actually stands against the civilian job market. Picture that market as a ladder of five rungs, ordered by entry bar — the qualification each rung asks for, from the closest to reach at the top to the furthest at the bottom. Pay and openings are attributes of each rung rather than what sets the order.
Exhibit 2 · The centerpiece
The misplacement gap
No experience required
$37K median · $31K–$44K typical · ~9.2M openings/yr
What opens it
No credential, licence or prior occupation required. This is where a screening system puts a record it cannot read, whatever the record contains.
161 occupations in this tier · ~9.2M openings/yr
Representative occupations
- Fast food and counter workers · 904,300 openings/yr $30,480
- Stockers and order fillers · 472,300 openings/yr $37,090
- Laborers and material movers · 384,300 openings/yr $38,940
Experience or hands-on skill
$51K median · $41K–$66K typical · ~3.2M openings/yr
What opens it
Experience or demonstrable hands-on skill in a defined occupation. A combat-arms record clears this rung on its technical competencies alone.
248 occupations in this tier · ~3.2M openings/yr
Representative occupations
- Maintenance and repair workers, general · 159,800 openings/yr $48,620
- Automotive service technicians · 70,000 openings/yr $49,670
- Assemblers and fabricators · 156,300 openings/yr $42,210
Proven people leadership
$61K median · $46K–$79K typical · ~860K openings/yr
What opens it
Proven people leadership. Pulled out ahead of the education buckets so supervisors are not double-counted against them — which is also why it is the narrowest rung on the ladder.
19 occupations in this tier · ~860K openings/yr
Representative occupations
- First-line supervisors, office and administrative support · 144,500 openings/yr $66,140
- First-line supervisors, food service · 183,900 openings/yr $42,010
Occupational license or certification
$52K median · $41K–$66K typical · ~1.4M openings/yr
What opens it
An occupational licence or certification is the gate, not the skill behind it — this rung captures the trades whose typical entry is a postsecondary non-degree award or an apprenticeship. One paid apprenticeship step from the rungs already cleared.
65 occupations in this tier · ~1.4M openings/yr
The trades this brief is about sit at the top of this rung
- Electricians · 81,000 openings/yr $62,350
- HVAC mechanics and installers · 40,100 openings/yr $59,810
- Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers · 237,600 openings/yr $57,440
Associate's or bachelor's degree
$90K median · $65K–$128K typical · ~4.2M openings/yr
What opens it
Typical entry education is an associate's, bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree — the one thing most separating service members do not hold at the point of transition, and the reason a degree-less record gets read down rather than across.
339 occupations in this tier · ~4.2M openings/yr
Representative occupations
- General and operations managers · 308,700 openings/yr $102,950
- Management analysts · 98,100 openings/yr $101,190
- Accountants and auditors · 124,200 openings/yr $81,680
$33K — where the market places a combat-arms record today (Census VEO, year 1)
Rungs are ordered by entry bar, not by pay, so the pay column does not climb in a straight line. Each bar is the 25th–75th percentile range across every occupation pooled in the rung; the notch is the median. Rungs a combat-arms record already clears are marked in burgundy.
Pay: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, national, May 2024. Openings: BLS Employment Projections 2024–34 projected annual average openings, growth plus replacement. Placement figure: Census Bureau Veteran Employment Outcomes.
$24,000
The misplacement gap
A combat-arms record clears the skilled and supervisory rungs. Screened against a posting, it is most often placed near the entry rung's $37,000 median — roughly $24,000 below the supervisory work it is already qualified for.
Basis: entry rung median against supervisor rung median.
The licensed rung sits one paid apprenticeship step beyond, and the licence itself is the gate. The trades this brief is about sit at the top of that rung — open its disclosure in Exhibit 2 to see them.
The rungs a combat-arms record already clears, and the licensed rung one paid apprenticeship step beyond them, are where much of the shortage above sits. That is the whole argument in one frame: the openings and the qualifications are already pointed at each other.
Reading one record
Take a profile from our candidate work: a Marine, MOS 0341 mortarman, separating as an E-5 sergeant. He has maintained and employed crew-served weapons systems, held accountability for equipment and personnel, and trained the Marines under him to standard.
That record qualifies him today for skilled technical work and, on the strength of documented leadership, for front-line supervision. It puts him one paid apprenticeship step from the licensed trades. Screened against a posting, he is most often placed near the entry rung, around $37,000 — roughly $24,000 a year below the front-line supervisory work he is already qualified to do.
Interactive · The same record, read two ways
MOS 0341, E-5 sergeant — translated rung by rung
Marine, MOS 0341 mortarman, separating as an E-5 sergeant
What the record contains
Switch an element off to see what a hiring system that can't read it loses.
What it qualifies him for
3 matched · 0 lost
Switch between the two readings to see what a hiring system that cannot read the record loses.
Illustrative of how Semper Forward's crosswalk reads one real candidate record. Rungs are the five tiers in Exhibit 2.
The distance between the rung a veteran is qualified for and the rung they land on is the misplacement gap. It measures how well a hiring process recognizes capability, and it points straight at the opportunity: the people who could fill the skilled and licensed openings are already qualified, already available, and currently overlooked.
The capability already exists
For a large share of these veterans, the structured learning capability already exists. For many, that capability comes from a federally defined apprenticeship, and for many separators, a federally issued one. Read the federal regulation that governs Registered Apprenticeship, 29 CFR Part 29, against a military enlistment, and the match is close to exact.
Exhibit 3
29 CFR Part 29, read against an enlistment
29 CFR Part 29 requires
What service provides
-
Structured, multi-year supervised on-the-job learning
A multi-year enlistment performing an assigned occupational specialty under continuous supervision
-
Formal classroom instruction
Service technical schools for the specialty, plus recurring qualification training
-
Pay that rises with demonstrated competency
Advancement in grade and pay on demonstrated competency and time in service
-
Evaluation against published occupational standards
Evaluation against the published standards of the military occupational specialty
-
A credential at completion
A serialized DOL Certificate of Completion of Apprenticeship, issued through USMAP across roughly 150 trades
29 CFR Part 29 (Labor Standards for the Registration of Apprenticeship Programs); United Services Military Apprenticeship Program (USMAP).
The government already treats the two as equivalent. Since the 1970s, the United Services Military Apprenticeship Program, run jointly by the Departments of Defense and Labor, has issued qualifying service members the same serialized DOL Certificate of Completion of Apprenticeship a civilian earns, across roughly 150 trades.
The military runs a training system that works like registered apprenticeship, at national scale. For many of these candidates, the credential in question is a federal apprenticeship certificate an employer already knows how to value, the same one a civilian journeyworker holds. Recognizing it is a matter of knowing to look for it, and it requires no new pipeline and no new training. That makes these veterans a keystone talent pool for the skilled trades — already credentialed to earn the licenses the shortage runs on.
What to do
What this means for employers
The talent to fill the skilled, licensed, and supervisory roles that are hardest to hire for is already trained, already credentialed, and entering the civilian workforce by the hundreds of thousands every year. The work is to find it and place it correctly. That takes three things working together.
01
Translate the record
Map a service history to the civilian occupation and rung it actually qualifies for, so a proven squad leader or aircraft mechanic is evaluated for the skilled work they can do rather than screened to the entry-level default.
02
Source at transition
Recruit where this talent is, at the point of transition, rather than waiting for résumés that undersell it to trickle in.
03
Be ready to receive it
Be genuinely veteran-ready, so talent placed at the right level has managers who understand the background and a path that keeps them. Capability hired at its level tends to stay.
The mission
This is the work Semper Forward exists to do: find this talent at the source, translate the military record into the civilian roles and credentials it maps to, and help employers become the kind of organization it wants to join and stay with. The shortage will persist on its own momentum. The best-matched supply for it is already out there, in uniform today and in transition tomorrow, and the employers who go looking will be hiring from a pool their competitors have not touched.
The combat-arms discount is not a statement about what these veterans are worth. It is a statement about how well the market can currently see them. Learn to see them clearly, and a shortage of skilled talent meets a supply of exactly the people who can fill it.
Appendix
A note on the evidence
The qualification-ladder figures are drawn from federal data. Median and 25th–75th percentile pay are BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (national, May 2024), employment-weighted across the detailed occupations grouped into the five tiers. Because each rung pools every occupation in it, a rung median can sit below the credentialed occupations most often cited from that rung; individual occupation medians quoted in the text are OEWS May 2024 national figures for those occupations. The rungs are ordered by entry bar rather than by pay, so the pay column does not climb monotonically. Openings are BLS Employment Projections (2024–34) projected annual average openings, growth plus replacement, and reconcile to the BLS all-occupation total of roughly 19 million openings a year. The tiering and rung order follow Semper Forward’s five-tier crosswalk, which ranks rungs by the qualification each one asks for, closest to furthest. The typical combat-arms starting figure of about $33K is from the Census Bureau’s Veteran Employment Outcomes. The skilled-trade shortage magnitudes are drawn from government and named industry sources: BLS, GAO, Boeing, ATEC, ATA, TechForce, and the Deloitte and Manufacturing Institute talent study; annual figures are the published multi-year totals divided across their stated horizons. The apprenticeship comparison rests on 29 CFR Part 29 and the United Services Military Apprenticeship Program. The claim throughout is deliberately a bundle: that combat-arms veterans bring screened, trained, and led capability the market under-recognizes at the moment of hire.
The supervisor rung pools 19 detailed occupations, a narrower base than the other rungs.
| Rung | Pay (median · typical) | Openings / yr |
|---|---|---|
| Entry level | $37K · $31K–$44K | ~9.2M |
| Skilled | $51K · $41K–$66K | ~3.2M |
| Supervisor | $61K · $46K–$79K | ~860K |
| Licensed / certified | $52K · $41K–$66K | ~1.4M |
| Degree-required | $90K · $65K–$128K | ~4.2M |
| Typical combat-arms placement | ~$33K | Census VEO, year 1 |
| Trade | Median | Openings / yr |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers | $57,440 | 237,600 |
| HVAC mechanics and installers | $59,810 | 40,100 |
| Electricians | $62,350 | 81,000 |
BLS OEWS, May 2024.
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau, Veteran Employment Outcomes (VEO), earnings by military occupation.
- Altonji & Pierret, Employer Learning and Statistical Discrimination (NBER 1998 / QJE 2001).
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) and Employment Projections (2024–34); Semper Forward “Opportunity by Qualification” five-tier framework.
- 29 CFR Part 29 (Labor Standards for the Registration of Apprenticeship Programs); United Services Military Apprenticeship Program (USMAP).
- Skilled-trade shortage: Boeing Pilot and Technician Outlook 2025–2044; ATEC Pipeline Report (2025); ATA Truck Driver Shortage Analysis; TechForce Foundation Technician Supply, Demand and Opportunity Report (2026); GAO-25-106286, Shipbuilding and Repair (Feb 2025); Deloitte & The Manufacturing Institute 2024 Talent Study.
