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Military recruiting (last updated September 25, 2004)
Fahrenheit 9/11 shows the efforts that some military recruiters go through in getting young people to enter the military.
The U.S. military generally seeks to recruit about 170,000 to 200,000 people a year, a number that is about half the objectives in the 1980s and that has actually declined somewhat since the September 11, 2001 attacks. But the military has faced difficulties in meeting its more modest goals, as young people's interest in the military has declined, as young people face more options other than the military, and as young people put off making major career decisions until later in life. In 1997 and 1998, the military even fell short of its objectives by 3 and 4 percent, respectively.
Recruiting takes many stages and involves several different components. Basically, the military tries to get people interested in the military through advertisements and outreach efforts, and uses recruiters to follow up on such efforts with individual contacts. The military also uses incentives to make military service more attractive.
The military regularly puts millions of dollars into recruiting advertising, one sign of the difficulty in achieving recruitment goals. The military and reserve branches altogether spent about $590 million in recruiting advertising in 2003, almost double what they spent in 1998. The Army alone increased its spending by 73 percent to $197 million, and the Air Force increased funding by 395 percent to $90.5 million.
The military also has about 12,000 of such recruiters around the country and overseas. In FY 2001, the Army had 6,054 recruiters, which meant that each recruiter on average would have to bring in 13 recruits to make the Army's overall objective of 75,800 new recruits that year. Recruiters are not paid financial incentives but could see their chances of advancement improve with more success.
To get one recruit, Army recruiters on average have to contact 120 individuals. Each stage in the process sees more fallout. On average, for every 120 individuals contacted by Army recruiters, only 17 schedule appointments, only 10 conduct appointments, only 2.3 take the required tests, and only 1 gets recruited. Navy recruiters and Marine recruiters do somewhat better; they on average contact 80 and 90 individuals, respectively, for each enlisted person.
Recruiters get leads from many sources. According to a 2004 study by the National Academy of Sciences, common leads include referrals from other applicants, responses to advertising and posters, and responses to the military's recruiting websites. Perhaps notably, the study did not identify random canvassing as seen in Fahrenheit 9/11 as a common source of leads.
Studies have found that recruiters face a difficult task and that the military could improve its system of selecting and using its own recruiters. A 1998 study by the General Accounting Office noted that "recruiters in all of the services generally work long hours, take very little leave, and are under almost constant pressure until they achieve their assigned monthly goals." The GAO study recommended that the military select noted that recruiters were too focused on getting recruits into the military, even though many recruits did not complete their initial service obligations and quickly dropped out.
Similarly, a 2004 study by the National Academy of Sciences noted that the military should improve its recruiting systems. It noted that the current systems for selecting recruiters "are optimized for administrative convenience rather than for mission effectiveness. There exists in the recruitment force today huge variability in mission effectiveness."
The National Academy of Sciences made the following other recommendations in improving military recruitment:
- Investing more resources in certain kids of recruiting efforts, such as the number of recruiters, advertising, size of enlistment bonuses, subsequent education, and pay.
- Offering more ways for young people to serve while simultaneously pursuing a college degree.
- Focusing more on older individuals, not just on high-school seniors, and also more on on parents and their views of military service.
The resulting military force does appear to have some overrepresentation of African-Americans, at least at the enlisted level. According to statistics from the Defense Department as of 2000, the military force was about 62 percent white, 20 percent black, 11 percent Hispanic, with African-Americans being overrepresented at the enlisted level (22.3 percent) but underrepresented at the officer level (8.5 percent).
Sources: National Research Council, Committee on the Youth Population and Military Recruitment, Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth: Implications for Military Recruitment (National Academies Press, 2004). Defense Manpower Data Center, Youth Attitude Tracking Study: 1999 Propensity and Advertising Report. General Accounting Office, Military Recruiting: DOD needs to establish objectives and measures to better evaluate advertising's effectiveness (September 2003) (GAO-03-1005). General Accounting Office, Military Recruiting: DOD could improve its recruiter selection and incentive systems (January 1998) (GAO/NSIAD-98-58). Data on military recruiting objectives and success is available on-line from the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at here. Data on minorities in the military was taken from the Defense Department's Defense Almanac, which was no longer available on-line as of September 2004.
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