Jobs Calculator
Military spending creates the fewest jobs per dollar of any major sector of government spending. Use the slider below to see what happens when you redirect military dollars to education, healthcare, clean energy, or infrastructure.
$100B
-500,000
Military Jobs Lost
+1,300,000
Education Jobs Gained
+800,000
Net Jobs Gained
Jobs Created Per $1 Million by Sector
If We Moved $100B to Each Sector
The Research: UMass PERI Study
This calculator is based on research by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which has published multiple studies on the employment effects of military vs. civilian government spending. Their methodology:
- Uses Bureau of Labor Statistics input-output models to calculate direct, indirect, and induced employment effects
- Measures jobs created per $1 billion in spending across sectors
- Accounts for supply chain effects (indirect jobs) and consumer spending effects (induced jobs)
- Has been peer-reviewed and cited by CBO, GAO, and congressional testimony
Why Military Spending Creates Fewer Jobs
Military spending is capital-intensive, not labor-intensive. Most military dollars go to expensive equipment — fighter jets, missiles, ships, satellites — that require relatively few workers to produce compared to their cost. A single F-35 costs $80 million. A single aircraft carrier costs $13 billion. The money goes to machines, not people.
By contrast, education spending is almost entirely labor-intensive: teachers, counselors, administrators. Healthcare spending employs nurses, doctors, aides. Infrastructure spending employs construction workers. These sectors put more people to work per dollar because they are people-powered, not machine-powered.
The difference is stark: redirecting just $100 billion from military to education would create a net gain of approximately 800,000 jobs. That's 800,000 more Americans employed — teachers, nurses, engineers — instead of more missiles sitting in warehouses.
Jobs Per $1 Billion by Sector
Teachers, administrators, support staff. Local spending stays in communities.
Doctors, nurses, technicians, home health aides. Growing demand.
Solar installers, wind technicians, grid workers. Fastest-growing sector.
Construction workers, engineers, maintenance. Builds lasting assets.
Capital-intensive weapons manufacturing. Money goes to equipment, not people.
The Political Economy of Defense Jobs
Defense contractors deliberately distribute work across as many congressional districts as possible. The F-35 provides jobs in 45 states. This makes the program politically untouchable — even though it has 800+ known deficiencies and costs $36,000/hour to fly. The jobs argument is the defense industry's most powerful weapon — not against foreign enemies, but against budget cuts.
But the jobs argument is misleading. Those same dollars, spent on education or infrastructure, would create 60–160% more jobs. The question isn't whether military spending creates jobs — it does. The question is whether those dollars could create more jobs elsewhere. The answer, per PERI research, is unambiguously yes.
What the Numbers Mean
Consider: the entire annual defense budget of $886 billion creates approximately 4.4 million jobs in the defense sector. If that same $886 billion were spent on education, it would create approximately 11.5 million jobs — a net gain of 7.1 million jobs. Of course, no one is proposing eliminating the entire defense budget. But even modest reallocation — say, $50 billion (5.6% of the DOD budget) — would create 400,000+ net new jobs.
💡 Did You Know?
The cost of a single F-35 fighter jet ($80M) could fund 1,600 teacher salaries for a year. The F-35 program's total lifetime cost ($1.7 trillion) could fund every public school teacher in America for over 20 years.
Related
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.”
— Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1935