15/hour is what Officers make in the military. It has far more reaching complications than just that.
It's also about what GS-4's make in the Federal Government. ($13.03/hr (not including locality pay)) This is something that's going to have immediate implications, because evidently
we're going to see a $15 minimum wage for Federal contractors in January of 2022. From my own experience, there's a world of difference between, say, a GS-3 and a GS-5 in terms of duties and responsibilities. Suddenly, you're not talking about making $11.60 to do low-intensity work, as compared to $14.57. I think that there's going to be a bit of a shock from anybody over GS-5 seeing people under them with a fraction of the responsibilities and duties that they have getting a... 15% hourly raise in the case of a GS-4 and a 59% hourly raise as GS-1 ($9.36/hr), while they get bupkis.
There is a bit of room for leeway here, admittedly. I'm assuming that they're all step one, and omitting locality pay. (For those here who don't know what I'm talking about (and bless you, this shit is weird), you can get more information about steps and locality pay
on this website. Steps basically are promotions within your position, grades are different levels of position responsibility (eg, in the IRS, GS-3 sorts forms, GS-5 handle and process them, GS-7 provide more technical analysis, etc.), and locality pay is predicated upon your location to adjust for local cost of living. For example, the locality pay in Utah would be 16% more, whereas Connecticut would be 32% more. So that $14.57 for GS-5 would be $16.90 in Utah and $19.23 in Connecticut. In that case, taking locality pay into account, a GS-1 in Utah would still see a $4.14 hourly increase from $10.86 (a 38% wage increase or $2.64 in Connecticut from $12.36, a 21% wage increase), so we're looking at a relatively large pay raise for GS-1 work, and the potential of seeing little to no increase even at GS-4.
But there is good news for Federal contractors,
as every Federal employee can expect to earn an average of 2.7% more as of January 1. I'm not sure if having wages barely keep up with inflation is going to help Federal contractor retention or morale, especially with such large pay increases for those doing less than many of them are, but who knows? I've spent way too long typing this all out, and I'm not sure how attractive doing a lot less work for about the same pay is, but I'm sure things will work out somehow.