Why has America’s army recruitment plummeted?

AMERICA’S ARMY is struggling to sign up soldiers. Recruitment in the 2022 fiscal year, which concluded on September 30th, appears to have been the worst since the draft ended in 1973. The army brought in about 45,000 recruits; it had aimed for 60,000. Christine Wormuth, the Secretary of the Army, has warned that, barring a turnaround, members of the National Guard and Army Reserve will need to be put on active duty. It may also be necessary, she added, for the army “to trim [its] force structure”, which could mean shutting down units. This year’s air-force and navy recruitment drives fared better, but partly because those services enlisted people from pools of “delayed-entry” recruits, who had already signed up. Even so, they, too, missed targets. What is going on?

The fallout from covid-19 is a big part of the problem. Lockdowns reduced eligibility by degrading academic performance and contributing to higher levels of obesity and mental illness. They also sharply limited face-to-face recruiting, most importantly in schools. Katherine Kuzminski, an expert on the armed forces and society at CNAS, a think-tank in Washington, says that men who finished school online, and thus spent less time with peers, are proving more likely to delay big life decisions, including going to college or joining up. Brian McGovern, deputy director of public affairs at the army’s recruiting command at Fort Knox, Kentucky, says that a growing “disconnect from society”, caused by the pandemic, has hampered recruitment: the proportion of eligible Americans who meet enlistment requirements has fallen from 29% in recent years to just 23%.