The Air Force is going through the toughest recruiting environment in “well over two decades,” and its current recruiting class is on the verge of missing its goal for the first time this century.
Military branches across the board have experienced difficulties in signing up new recruits in recent years, with both short- and long-term factors contributing to the predicament. The Air Force is 4,500 recruits behind where it should be in a different year, Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, the Air Force Recruiting Service commander, told the Washington Examiner in an interview Tuesday.
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The service branch is going through a “week-to-week dogfight of trying to get the numbers that we need to ship off basic training” as it pushes through the “toughest recruiting environment that we have experienced in well over two decades,” he added, shedding light on its recruiting numbers and whether the branch will reach this fiscal year’s goals. The last time the service didn’t do so was in 1999.
The coronavirus pandemic hurt the military’s ability to recruit because it could no longer go to high schools or public events to recruit young adults, as did the current labor shortage, Thomas said, citing both of these factors as short-term problems in the recent past.
Only 9% of the 16-to-21-year-olds questioned in a survey by the Defense Department’s the Joint Advertising Marketing Research and Studies program last summer answered that they would “definitely” or “probably” serve in the military, a percentage that marked its lowest point since 2007. It was at 13% before the pandemic.
“It’s never been 50%,” he said. “So it’s always been a relatively small number. And frankly, it’s our job as recruiters for those that don’t know or understand the military or be self-described as interested in the military to talk to him about it and maybe get them interested. But that number is low.”
He described the decreasing familiarity that people have with the military, a subject that predates the pandemic, as a longer-term contributing factor.
“Longer term, the primary root cause is a lack of familiarity,” the airman said. “Our studies show that one of the most significant influences in someone joining the military is knowing or meeting someone in the U.S. military. You would be surprised at the lack of understanding.”
The Air Force is looking to get back out into the public sphere for recruiting purposes in an attempt to salvage the situation, though Thomas couldn’t say that it was definitively out of the valley and on the way back up. Another setback that cannot be blamed on the pandemic, however, is that fewer people in the desired age ranges are eligible to serve in the military without a waiver.
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“Only 23% of American youth today are eligible to serve in uniform without a waiver,” he said, adding that academics, medical problems, and tattoos are among the variety of reasons that someone could be barred from serving without a waiver.
Thomas also noted that pop culture can affect the military’s recruiting abilities. The Air Force saw a bump following the release of the 1986 movie Top Gun and then its largest group of female applicants to the academy after Captain Marvel hit theaters in 2019. Recruiters are hoping for a similar bump following the new Top Gun movie.
