Military: New Jobs and Family Matters
13th March 2022
Many studies have been commissioned, many experiments conducted and while there has been some progress the problem persists. There are always new reasons to get out so collecting and analyzing reasons for leaving has become an ongoing task. The problem has been around since the late 1990s. The latest crisis has been caused by a problem that has been around forever but has now become a major source of pilot loss. It’s all about family life and most pilots marry women with a college degree. That has gone from 11 percent in the 1970s to 84 percent now. Pilots wives are often better educated than their husbands and can earn more except for the disruptions caused by military life. The wives find that the military is a good place to be if you are starting a family, but not so much when the kids get older and mom seeks, and often finds, a new career that is not compatible with the periodic moves to a new base. Women now comprise the majority of college graduates in the United States and have become a key source of trained and capable candidates for the growing number of jobs requiring those skills. Wives of pilots cannot consider a lot of the attractive job offers available because of the constant moves pilots and their families must make. The wives can often make more than the pilot husbands. As a result, even more pilots, once their obligatory term of service is done, get out.