The fixed local post was empty. The nearest Walmart, normally a good place to look for potential buyers, came to nothing. With thousands of soldiers missing for the US Army to reach its recruitment goal, the post’s commander, Sergeant James Pulliam, in camouflage uniform, scoured a mall parking lot.
Seeing a young woman getting out of a car, he flashed his best salesman smile. “Hey, how did you know I’d be here today?” she said, as if greeting an old friend. “I’ll help you join the Army!”
These are difficult times for military recruitment. Nearly every section of the military is running draft deficits this year — which is on track to be the worst of any year since just after the Vietnam War. The lack of rank and file men threatens to disrupt the functioning of the military machine, leaving critical posts unoccupied and platoons lacking enough people to function.
Part of the problem is Covid. Lockdowns have hampered recruiters’ ability to bond face-to-face with potential recruits. And mandatory vaccination for military personnel alienates some people who might otherwise be interested in being recruited.
The highly heated labor market, with far more open jobs than people to fill them, is another factor, as rising salaries and benefits in the civilian sector reduce the appeal of military service.
But longer-term demographic trends are another factor that is making itself felt. Less than a quarter of young American adults have the physical fitness level required to enlist and have no criminal records to disqualify them — that share is steadily shrinking.
And a shift in attitudes toward military service means that only one in ten young people today say they would at least consider doing so.
To try to counter these factors, the Armed Forces have raised enlistment bonuses to up to $50,000 and offer an additional up to $10,000 for certain recruits who can leave for basic training within 30 days. The guns loosened restrictions on neck tattoos, and in June the Army even briefly waived the high school diploma requirement — but decided that was a bad idea and revoked the change.
The Army is the largest of the forces and the hardest hit by this phenomenon. By the end of June, it had recruited just 40% of the 57,000 new rank and file it wants to be ready for action by September 30, the end of the fiscal year. So Pulliam, 41, a helicopter mechanic who became a recruiter five years ago, is looking for anyone who might want to join the Army.
Before enlisting in 2012, he was 31 years old and worked in a warehouse in North Carolina. A year later, he was working with Apache AH-64 helicopters, with home and education paid for by the Army. “It completely transformed my life,” he says. “And it’s the gift I have to offer other people, just find the ones who need it.”
The girl in the mall parking lot was going to get a pizza and, confused, ended up politely apologizing that she couldn’t enlist, pointing to an insulin pump attached to her shorts. The sergeant didn’t give up: “Give me a name—just a name, a number I can call. You must know someone who might want to enlist.”
Seconds later he was on the phone with a friend of the woman’s, but then he paused, turned around, and exclaimed, “The guy hung up on me!”
The situation is not any easier for the other weapons. The Navy and Marine Corps do not release recruitment numbers before the end of the fiscal year, but both admit they will struggle to meet their quotas. Even the Air Force, which has rarely had trouble attracting talent in the past, is 4,000 fewer recruits than it normally achieves.
“The truth is, frankly, it’s a fight we fight every week,” says General Edward Thomas Jr., commander of the Air Force Recruitment Service. “We’re starting to hope that we can fulfill this year’s mission, but that’s not certain yet.”
Thomas says Covid has kept recruiters away from street fairs and festivals, but also high schools, their most productive terrain. A modest increase in recruitment due to flashy commercials the military ran ahead of the “Top Gun: Maverick” sessions helped a little, but there are larger, longer-term concerns about the dwindling pool of young Americans who are able and willing to serve. .
The Pentagon has found that 76% of adults ages 17 to 24 are either too obese to qualify for military service or have other medical conditions or criminal records that would make it impossible for them to do so without special authorization. And the share of young adults who might be interested in serving has been steadily falling: before the pandemic it was 13%, now it’s 9%.
“These are the lowest levels of trust in the US government and military,” says the general.
It’s never been easy to maintain one of the world’s largest military forces entirely on volunteers, and this isn’t the first time it’s been short of recruits in the 49 years since the US ended conscription. When jobs in the civilian sector are plentiful, as they are now, there are two tactics: make membership more attractive, with enlistment bonuses and better pay; and lower the criteria a little.
The Armed Forces have also been reducing their contingents, adapting to the new situation. The number of active-duty military personnel today is about half what it was in the 1980s and is projected to continue to decline.
