What is this "needs to" stuff you're talking about? You're missing the context. The 2LT succeeded at scoring himself a seat in the ab initio beauty pageant. The civilian-only regional FO guy didn't. It is what it is. And that's the point. That's simple barriers to entry yielding a raise in pay; something military pilots enjoy and civilian regional FOs do not.

You want to give up the baby so that everybody can fulfill their dream whilst getting paid in landings and logbook flight time? Go right ahead. But that won't help the economic situation of regional FOs too thick to recognize when they're supposed to quit the industry for their own economic good. They'll never make a living wage. Somebody has to get shorted a musical chair for another to make a competitive wage in a Country of declining median wage and overwhelming labor surplus in most skilled and unskilled vocations; nevermind an industry with a labor pool so petulantly price-inelastic it makes American Idol walk-in audition applicants look 'rational' by comparison.

Welcome to the Hunger Games. The natural outcome should be the consolidation of these regional jobs for the sustainment of the ones left. That's a reduction in jobs, for the mathematically challenged. This "raise regional FO pay" is a pipedream with no leverage.The economy never needed 10,000 RJ jobs.