Bad Economy Translates Into Military Recruiting Boom
While some aspects of our armed forces have been hurt by the recession, this hasn’t been the case when it comes to recruitment. From the AFP tonight:
Helped by tough economic times, the US military had a banner year for recruitment, meeting all its goals for the first time since creating an all-volunteer force in 1973, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
High unemployment, which just hit a 26-year-high of 9.8 percent, helped recruiting as well as a multi-billion dollar effort to attract volunteers to serve in uniform, officials said.
“We’re pleased to report that, for the first time since the advent of the all-volunteer force, all of the military components, active and reserve, met their number as well as their quality goals,” Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary for defense for military personnel policy, told reporters.
Carr said the country’s worst economic recession since the 1930s “was a force” in the recruiting results for fiscal year 2009, though not the only factor.
As AFP staff mentioned, the quality, so to speak, of new recruits has improved. From the piece:
Under pressure to bolster manpower, the military had come under criticism in recent years for accepting recruits with criminal records or lower levels of education.
But officials said more recruits had higher levels of education in 2009.
Of Army recruits, 94.7 percent were high school graduates compared to about 83 percent in 2008, Campbell said.
For all the armed services, 96 percent had graduated from high school, exceeding the military’s goal of 90 percent and surpassing the country’s overall average of 75 percent.
“Very pretty, Colonel. But can they fight?”
Source:
“With economy down, US military recruitment is up”
Agence France-Presse, October 13, 2009
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