War turns recruiting into battle
By Tom Philpott
In 1998 and again in 1999, the Army missed its recruiting goals. But the challenges then were modest compared with what the Army faces today, said Curtis Gilroy, the Defense Department's director of recruiting policy.
"And that's primarily because of the Iraq war," said Gilroy. "It's really very, very different" from the late 1990s.
The problem then was a budget miscalculation. Recruiting services had too little money for advertising and too few recruiters on the street to compete for volunteers in a thriving economy.
"We had record low unemployment (of) 4 percent. Also, we were drawing down the force, so we cut budgets at the same time," Gilroy said.
Today's challenge centers on the continuing deployment of 140,000 ground forces to the war zone of Iraq with no exit schedule on the table. The Marine Corps is still getting the recruits it needs. But not the Army.
From October 2004 through June 2005, the Army enlisted 47,121 recruits. That was 14 percent below its goal, for a shortage of nearly 8,000. The Army National Guard was short by 23 percent, or 10,400 recruits, and the Army Reserve by 21 percent, short 4,100 volunteers. Those are significant shortages. Gilroy cited four factors, three of them tied to Iraq:
He shared survey data showing that, in November 2004, only 31 percent of parents and 47 percent of nonparent influencers said they probably would encourage youth to join the military. By May, or after another six months of war, only 25 percent of parents and 42 percent of nonparents said they would encourage youth to enlist.
The sharp drops in propensity to enlist have been among blacks and women, Gilroy said. In June 2003, 10 percent of recruit-age women surveyed said they were inclined to enter service. By last November, the figure had fallen to 7 percent. Over the same period, black youths likely to join fell from 21 percent to 11 percent.
