Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic all but halted in-person recruiting in America’s high schools, the U.S. military has fallen short of its recruiting goals. The U.S. Army missed its FY22 recruiting goal by 25 percent, and its FY23 recruiting goal by 10 percent. The Army requires roughly 65,000 new recruits each year, but it has strained to acquire that many in a tight job market. The Air Force and Navy have suffered similar shortfalls. FY24 witnessed a rebound, with the armed forces recruiting 12.5 percent more personnel (roughly 25,000 more recruits) than the previous year. No matter how one parses the numbers, recruiting is still tight. In the past few years, only the U.S. Marine Corps and the tiny Space Force have consistently met their recruiting needs.
Ever since the inception of the all-volunteer military in 1973, recruitment has risen and fallen in conjunction with civilian employment. When economic activity dipped, young men and women could find employment at decent wages by joining the armed services. As wages stagnated in the 1980s and 1990s, military wages compared favorably with civilian jobs and recruiting remained relatively constant. Young Americans serving a tour of duty could acquire job skills and save money for college, helped by the GI Bill. After 2008, educational benefits increased significantly, allowing veterans to attend up to four years of college essentially for free.
America’s strong economy has disincentivized enlistment in the armed forces in recent years. The nation’s unemployment rate dipped below 4 percent in 2018 and has remained below that level, with the exception of the period of economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, ever since. Compounding this trend, the percentage of young men and women eligible to join the military has fallen to an all-time low. With lower birthrates, the youth population is declining. The drop in births caused by the Great Recession is starting to hit home, with a ten percent reduction in eligible young men and women turning 18 years of age beginning in 2026. In this smaller pool of potential recruits, only 23 percent aged 17 to 25 are eligible to enlist in the military without a waiver. High school dropouts, mental health challenges, drug use, criminal records, obesity, and medical issues have all had an impact on the pool of eligible recruits.
In the 1970s and 1980s when faced with recruiting shortfalls, the military services would resort to admitting recruits without high school diplomas or those who scored low on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the standard test used by the military to measure a potential recruit’s aptitude in math, verbal, science, and technical skills. The services have been reluctant to again resort to such measures, as the propensity of enlisted personnel to complete their enlistment is directly tied to recruit quality. Poor performing soldiers also aren’t up to the challenge of operating today’s increasingly high-tech equipment.
Increasingly, the military services are offering ineligible recruits prep courses to get them in shape physically and academically, allowing them time to lose weight, improve their physical fitness, and improving their English language abilities, among other enhancements. About a quarter of the Army’s recruits this past year went through the soldier prep program.
But deeper cultural issues are also at play. Fewer Americans today view a tour in the military as a rite of passage or as a debt owed to the nation. Young men and women who have grown up during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have also witnessed the results of the deadly side of combat and are reluctant to potentially put their lives at risk by joining the military. The percentage of Americans who would encourage someone to join the military has declined from 70 percent in 2018 to just 51 percent today. By 2022, just 12 percent of American youth had a parent who served in the military, one of the biggest inducements to joining the service. Most recruits come from military families, making the military today increasingly a family business. This is dangerous for American society in the long run. Political allegations that the military has gone “woke” have influenced parents, coaches, pastors, and other influencers to become lukewarm about military service. As confidence in the military declines, so does willingness of young people to serve.
The Marines have been able to sustain their recruitment by portraying the Corps as an elite band of warriors. This works for the Corps, which has fewer than 180,000 personnel, but it will not solve the larger challenge of recruiting for the other services, particularly the 460,000-strong U.S. Army. Recruits who value the warrior ethos naturally gravitate toward the Marines and Special Forces. The other services let recruits know they will be part of a team that embraces an ethical warrior culture that will defend the nation against its enemies but transmitting that message will not fill the ranks. The most effective advertising slogan in the Army’s history was “Be All You Can Be,” a slogan it has resurrected. One thing the Marines do is put a great deal of emphasis on recruiting by putting their strongest personnel into recruiting positions, something the other services should copy.
There is no magic “silver bullet” to fix the military’s recruiting woes. Higher pay and bonuses will help, but the military is competing in this regard with civilian businesses and industry, which are also offering incentives to attract workers in a tight labor market. The military could work with Congress to offer citizenship to immigrants who serve for a certain number of years in the military, which would help. The U.S. population is composed of 13.5 percent immigrants, but only 4 percent of the military is composed of non-U.S. citizens. Initiatives to work with the nation’s youth to improve their physical and mental abilities and committing more and high-quality personnel to the recruiting mission are already underway.
Finally, reinstituting the draft is an option, but absent an existential national security crisis, doing so is politically unpalatable. The shortfall in recruiting is relatively small compared with each draft-eligible year group, meaning the drafting of personnel to fill the shortages would be seen as highly unfair and inequitable to those drafted. The armed services do not want to go back to the days of the draftee military, with its discipline and morale challenges. Absent a clear and present danger to the nation, the draft will remain dormant. It is instead incumbent upon the leaders of the armed services to work with the administration and Congress to enact policies that will overcome their current recruiting challenges.
