Washington ? Young U.S. troops who could be at war in Iraq within weeks would be paid less for fighting Saddam Hussein than they would if they stayed home and flipped burgers.

With the 4.1 percent military pay raise that just went into effect, the basic monthly pay for a private first class became $1,290 a month, or about $15,480 a year, according to the Pentagon’s new monthly pay tables.

The sergeant who would lead a squad into battle would rate at least $1,733.70 a month ($20,804 a year), and the second lieutenant in charge of a platoon would be paid $2,183.70 ($26,204).

President Bush promised the raise in his campaign for the White House, drawing huge cheers when he mentioned it before military audiences.

The U.S. military was traditionally poorly paid when there was a draft and the vast majority of recruits served brief enlistments and returned to civilian life, said Andrew Krepinevich, a former Army officer and head of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

But the switch to the volunteer military in the 1970s forced Congress to approve periodic pay increases. “They came to the realization that people get more expensive to recruit and retain in a volunteer military,” Krepinevich said.

Comparisons with pay scales today for civilian jobs are difficult, since the military has housing and subsistence allowances as well as bonuses for hazardous or hardship duty.

But even rough comparisons are eye-opening.

The basic pay of a private first class would work out to about $7.44 an hour for a 40-hour week, a sergeant would get $10.48 and a second lieutenant $13.11.

“Food service workers in the service sector are pretty much at the lower end of the scale,” said Martin Kohli, a regional economist for the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. But those workers in the New York City, for example, averaged $9.10, according to the bureau.

Another rough comparison would be the uniformed city services in New York City. Rookie police officers are paid at least $34,514 a year, firefighters, $32,724 — roughly equal to the pay of a captain in the military.

The military also pays no attention to a 40-hour workweek, the troops don’t get overtime and it’s impossible to put a monetary value on the risk and stress of duty in a combat zone, said Krepinevich.

Krepinevich said the pay scales and the unpredictable length of deployments in the war on terror would pose a problem for the all-volunteer military in retaining troops. He said, “They’re going to be asking more and more, ‘Do I want to make a career out of this?”‘

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, regularly salute the troops for the sacrifices they make.

In his off-the-cuff Christmas message from the Pentagon, Myers noted that when he’s with troops in the field, he constantly marvels at how “they rarely complain about their circumstances. They stand ready to answer any call,” he said, and their reward is “the realization that they’re making the world a safer place for all of us.”