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| Photo Credit: AP. |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army fell about 15,000 soldiers — or 25% — short of its recruitment goal this year, officials confirmed Friday, despite a frantic effort to make up the widely expected gap in a year when all the military services struggled in a tight jobs market to find young people willing and fit to enlist.
While the
Army was the only service that didn’t meet its target, all of the others had to
dig deep into their pools of delayed entry applicants, which will put them
behind as they begin the next recruiting year on Saturday.
The
worsening problem stirs debate about whether America’s fighting force should be
restructured or reduced in size if the services can’t recruit enough, and could
also put added pressure on the National Guard and Reserve to help meet mission
requirements.
According to
officials, the Marine Corps, which usually goes into each fiscal year with as
much as 50% of its recruiting goal already locked in, has only a bit more than
30%. And the Air Force and the Navy will only have about 10% of their goals as
they start the new fiscal year. The Air Force usually has about 25%. Officials
spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details on the recruiting totals
that have not yet been released.
“In the Army’s most challenging recruiting
year since the start of the all-volunteer force, we will only achieve 75% of
our fiscal year 22 recruiting goal,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a
statement to The Associated Press. “The Army will maintain its readiness and
meet all our national security requirements. If recruiting challenges persist,
we will draw on the Guard and Reserve to augment active-duty forces, and may
need to trim our force structure.”
Officials
said the Army brought in about 45,000 soldiers during the fiscal year that ended
Friday. The goal was 60,000.
The Air
Force, meanwhile, was able to pull enough recruits from its delayed entry pool
to exactly met its goal to bring in 26,151 recruits this year.
“Using Air
Force lexicon, I would say we’re doing a dead stick landing as we come into the
end of fiscal ’22, and we’re going to need to turn around on the first of
October and do an afterburner takeoff,” Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas, head of the
Air Force Recruiting Service, said at a conference last week. “We’re going to
be starting 2023 in a tougher position than we started 2022.”
Military
leaders used increased enlistment bonuses and other programs to try and build
their numbers this year, but they say it’s getting more and more difficult to
compete with private industry in the tight labor market. And as they look to
the future, they worry that if the declining enlistment trends continue, the
Pentagon may have to reassess its force requirements and find ways to make the military
a more attractive profession to the eroding number of young Americans who can
meet mental and physical requirements for service.
Early this
year, military leaders were already braced for a bad recruiting season. The
Army, for example, announced several months ago that it would have to adjust
the expected size of its total force this year from 476,000 to about 466,000.
The large recruiting shortfall was offset a bit by the Army’s ability to exceed
its retention goal — keeping 104% of the targeted number of troops in the
service.
The causes
for the recruiting struggles are many and varied.
Two years of
the pandemic shut off recruiters’ access to schools, public events, fairs and
other youth organizations where they often find prospects. Moving to online
recruiting — as in-person meetings closed down — was only marginally
successful. And some of the in-person access has been slow to open up again.
At the same
time, companies like McDonalds are now wooing workers with tuition benefits and
other increased perks that for years made the military an attractive
profession. Military leaders say that they are suffering from the same labor
shortage that has restaurants, airlines, shops and other businesses desperately
scraping for workers.
Exacerbating
the problem is the fact that according to estimates, just 23% of young people
can meet the military’s fitness, educational and moral requirements — with many
disqualified for reasons ranging from medical issues to criminal records and
tattoos.
“We remain committed to maintaining our
standards, investing in America’s youth, and emphasizing quality over
quantity,” Gen. James McConville, chief of staff of the Army said.
It’s unclear
how much the debate over the COVID-19 vaccine is playing in the recruiting
struggles. So far, the Army has discharged a bit more than 1,700 soldiers for
refusing to take the mandated vaccine. That’s a tiny fraction of the overall
force size.
At the same
time, the patriotism that fueled the rush to military service in the wake of
the Sept. 11 attacks has dimmed. Some may look around and see no more wars and
terrorists to fight so they look elsewhere. And others see lucrative hiring
campaigns by private industry and know the salaries will be better than
military pay, and they will be less likely to end up wounded or killed in those
jobs.
The services
are grappling with a number of new programs and other changes to beef up
recruiting but face lingering questions about how best to convince young people
that military life is a viable option for them.
During a
recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the recruiting challenges,
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., challenged the services to “think outside the
box, creating new career paths, offering innovative pay and incentive
structures, and realigning some capabilities from military to civilian
workforces should all be on the table.”