U.S. Army Hits July Recruiting Goal

The good news? July makes it two successful months in a row for Army recruiting and, hey, that makes it a winning streak. The bad news? It doesn’t look good for fiscal year 2005.

Most branches of the U.S. military achieved their recruiting goals in July, a Pentagon spokesman said.

The active Army beat its recruiting goal for the second consecutive month, and the active Marine Corps, its reserves and the Air Force and Navy hit or exceeded their goals, spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters today. The Navy Reserve and Air National Guard missed their goals.

The Army missed its goals in the four months from February through May, and with a total of 55,207 new recruits so far in fiscal 2005, it might not hit its target of 80,000 by Sept. 30. It hasn’t missed its goal since 1999.

The service raised this year’s goal to 80,000 recruits from 77,000 to increase the number of combat brigades it can deploy.

The July figures are “very encouraging,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow on defense issues at the Brookings Institution. “Given the recent spate of bad news from Iraq, and bad trends in recruiting data, on balance these figures are a relief – and a signal that, while serious problems and risks remain, there is no acute personnel crisis just yet,”

Still, “the Army is hardly out of the woods,” O’Hanlon said. “It needs to make up deficits in the active force, not just make its original monthly goals and clearly its Guard and Reserve numbers are still not where they need to be at all.”

[…]

The Army beat its July goal of 7,450 new recruits by 635, Whitman said. The Army in May raised the goal from 6,100 to make up for earlier misses. The Army Reserve missed its July goal of 2,585 recruits by 454 and the Army National Guard missed its goal of 5,920 by 1,208.

The Army National Guard missed its recruiting goals in 18 of the 19 months between January 2004 and July 30, the Pentagon said today. The goal was exceeded in September 2004 by 27, according to Pentagon figures. The Army Reserves missed its goal from January through May before reaching them in June and July.

“When you look at the Reserves and Guard, there is some work to be done,” Whitman said. Still, “it’s been a pretty good month in terms of recruiting,”

[…]

“Recruiting will remain challenging for the remainder of fiscal 2005 and well into the future,” service Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker told the Senate Armed Services Committee in late June. Schoomaker, in written testimony, said the challenges include a strong economy and wartime deployments.

To compound the issues of trying to recruit during a very healthy job market and an ongoing war, add the higher-than-expected active service retention rates and the difficulties of the reserve components is almost to be expected. Much of the new blood for the Guard and Reserve elements are expected to come from those leaving active duty. This is demonstrated by the strains shown in the Air National Guard and Naval Reserve, the first I’d heard of those components suffering recruiting issues. This article carries much of the same news but focuses more on the reserve numbers.

There are many jobs in the military I would never want and, with the pressures being faced right now, recruiter is right up there at the top of the list. Trust me, it would’ve been pretty high on the list anyway.