Abstract: Army personnel costs are a significant part of the Army’s budget. Given force size, grade, and experience mix, the major driver of personnel costs is military compensation, which includes basic pay, allowances, special and incentives pays, retirement accrual, and an array of other benefits. Military compensation is used by the U.S. Department of Defense as a strategic human resources tool to attract, retain, and motivate high-quality personnel to stay, seek advancement, and eventually separate from service. Between 2000 and 2020, military basic pay grew faster than inflation, by 70.7 percent versus a 51.9 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index. Since 2021, however, cost of living has been particularly salient in discussions about the adequacy and cost of military compensation, owing to historic rates of inflation nationally and to uneven rates of inflation across geographic areas. In a step toward evaluating whether military compensation has been effective and efficient in addressing cost-of-living changes, the authors explore the extent to which military compensation growth has kept up with cost-of-living changes experienced by Army personnel from 2018 to 2022, across geographic areas and across subgroups of soldiers.