As a Private, E-1, in 1970, my first monthly pay scale was 89 dollars. Then VOLAR (Volunteer Army) struck about a year later and it jumped up to 389, and even though I had been promoted a few times, we were still making a huge amount more.
That was because it took a lot more money to attract enough men as volunteers once the draft was stopped. I went into the Navy in 1962 and I think my pay as an E-1 was only $69. a month so it went up about twenty dollars a month in eight years. Then it went up another three hundred a month in one year because the pool of draftees was no longer available. $389 a month in 1971 was pretty good starting pay for civilians in a lot of areas. It made the military more attractive than it had ever been before. Add three meals a day, free medical and dental and housing and it meant a young single man could put most of that in the bank every month if he wanted to. With the possibility of military schooling which would applyh to civilian work and VA educational benefits after release it made the military a good deal indeed.