Why are officers recognized with awards more than enlisted?

Theater policy - official or not - was that every platoon leader and principle staff officer would be awarded a Bronze Star. After that, the quota for the unit was pretty much used up except for the CSM and 1SGs. I suggested the creation of a Snowflake Device to be affixed to the ribbon for those who earned this award while never leaving air conditioning. Command was not amused.

1. Organizational culture plays a role. Some units give out more awards than necessary, others give out very few. A lot of it depends on your leadership.

2. With nearly 11 years of service, two deployments, and a successful company command I have two ARCOMs and an MSM. None of my awards were impact awards. I can count the number of times in my career I've seen an officer of any grade receive an impact award on one hand.

3. Your being an 8 year E4 immediately sends up red flags, especially in a relatively high density MOS. It's very possible you're being held back by a lack of slots, but with that said what have you done to distinguish yourself? Are you scoring 270+ on the APFT, shooting expert, and finding ways to go the extra mile? Do you have SSD1 and BLC done? Have you stepped into an NCO position to fill a vacancy?

4. There's something called the burden of command. It's an incredible honor, but an extremely challenging experience at the same time. In my case I was responsible for both the successes and failures of 131 men. Command does not mean sitting in your office drinking coffee while your men work. If you think your Officers do nothing one of two things are happening: either they're all shitbags (unlikely) or you're simply oblivious to the work they've put in. (Likely) Any officer worth his salt is on step 8 of the TLPs by the time you arrive at formation.

5. You're awful close to whining in the post. Tagging "fairness" isn't helping your case either. Nothing is fair on the battlefield.

Awards tend to be aligned with position and responsibility, along with achievement. Many of the awards you are referencing are service awards because an officer completed an assignment as a Platoon Leader, Staff officer, or commander.
Enlisted Soldiers don't get assignments where their position and responsibilities rate a Service award until they've been in for a while.
Instead, enlisted Soldiers tend to get awards for doing something extraordinary, like winning a Soldier of the Year board or really putting in work above and beyond during a training event.

If you feel like you aren't being recognized for what you do, sometimes the best thing to do is put yourself in a position to be recognized.
Lead training.
Volunteer for additional duties.
Try something hard, like an Audie Murphy Board.

I can tell you that the same thing happens when you get senior enough; people just expect you to perform outstandingly, because you are the First Sergeant, Sergeant Major, etc.
Honestly at this stage in the game, I don't need any more medals to validate what I do; it is as much a hassle to update a ribbon for one more AAM or something. But I absolutely recognize what a little formal recognition means to my Soldiers, so I try to give them opportunities to excel and see what the results are. Excellence tends to self-identify.

From my perspective, part of the problem looks like you haven't been in a unit long enough for leadership to get a good handle on your abilities and capabilities - based on your profile, you've been in 5 units since you made specialist 5 years ago.

That means your leadership has, on average, 24 days of IDT (half of which is tied up in admin and mandatory training) and 2-3 weeks of ECT to get you integrated into the unit and begin to evaluate you. That's not a lot of time - and then you're gone to the next unit. Given a choice between writing an award for you and the Specialist who's been in the unit for 2-3 years, who do you think is going to get the ARCOM?

My advice would be to find a unit - preferably an Engineer unit - and stick with it.

Couple things cross my mind inreading the question and responses....
1. Why are you a 8 year SPC?
2. Have you done something to warrent/deserve/earn an award?
3. What is your command policy on awards? Some have PCS, 300 APFT, 40/40 range qual....
I went the first 8 years/all of my enlisted time with 1 unit transfer without getting an award (and I went above the standard by doing CLS, NBC, and UPL). Sometimes it's a leadership issue.
My policy and expectation is to earn an award you go above and beyond your job and/or grade. I have awarded PFCs for doing MSG tasks, because that SM exceeded the expectation.
Officers carry a greater level of responsibility and they tend to get noticed more (both positively and negatively), that could be why you feel or have seen more officers get awards.

Bad leadership. Soldiers should be rewarded for going above and beyond.

Okay, this is ridiculous. Officers don't get recognized more often than enlisted. In all actuality, the lower enlisted members probably get more recognized than any other group in the military. I think this is for a few reasons: 1. Lower enlisted are usually younger and need that pat on the back to keep their morale up, 2. NCOs by that time don't really care about massing awards, especially if they have already made it to E6 and thus, in the army it goes to the centralized boards (i can't speak on the other services. But more importantly, who actually thinks to put the LT in for an AAM? No one. He or she is expected to uphold the standard and thus doing great really isn't an award worthy feet. Go looking around at the ribbon racks of officers and enlisted members and tell me which ones have the most AAMs and ARCOMs and such. I be never seen an officer with more than one ARCOM and I don't believe I've ever seen one wearing an AAM. This sounds more to me like someone pouting because they haven't earned enough medals. You must exceed the standard to earn medals.go out and start exceeding!

I can go on for hours about this very topic. There is a belief that level of responsibility (read rank) determines the award. On paper this is not true. Every award has a set criteria and any Soldier that meets said criteria can be awarded that. However, fact of the matter is too many so called leaders tie rank to the award. This is why most E-7 and above get BSMs as deployment awards and E-6 and below typically do not (unless it has a V). I always read the criteria and put my Soldiers in for awards that met it. Every single time I wrote one up that was higher than an ARCOM it was summarily downgraded due to the grade of the Soldier. It didn't matter to the chain of command that they clearly met the criteria.

In my opinion it's true. Of my 27 years served, my last 10 I held many high profile positions to include at the Division level. A lot of the things I developed and accomplished were firsts. I was also deployed a couple of times during my last 10 where I accomplished high level payoff things that had never been done before. The significance of my last 10 years is that's how far you can go back to write a retirement award. To shorten the story, my COL submitted me for a LOM, and since I was at the Division level it had to be approved outside my installation by the next higher command. Well it was downgraded to a MSM and never left my command, but meanwhile several senior offices and even a few Sergeants Majors received the same award (LOM) for working at the Division for a few years and doing various other things, but many did not have a right Shoulder patch. By this time I had several. So this is not only perception, it's reality. Officers take care of officers, and anyone below E9 enlisted is on his own seemingly. I was once in a unit early on and after a deployment the Commander told the PLDRs/PSGs that awards will be done by rank regardless of accomplishment. So I serverd all my years in the Army and successfully accomplished my mission above and beyond in many astuere environments and I get the same award as a MAJ gets for PCSing after two years. Hummm...

I can never begin to think I have the answer to this, but in my limited experience the service you belong to has a lot to do with this. When I was at HQUSCENTCOM I'd put individuals up for awards and the Marines would routinely deny or downgrade them while the other services would approve, or at least approve a downgraded version, of what was submitted. I agree with comments that more senior individuals realize the significance of awards and that younger leaders most probably have not learned the techniques of writing a nomination that will check all the boxes.