Although most Americans continue to think military service is good for young people, less now know someone who has joined the military to find a job, according to the latest survey from Rasmussen Reports.
Rasmussen has been asking Americans for the last several years if they know anyone who has joined the military because of the bad job market.
A year ago, 43 percent responded “yes,” but this year that number was down to 36 percent, despite continued low employment rates for young people. An estimated 5.8 million young people are not in school or working, and earlier this year 15 percent of workers 16 to 24 were unemployed.
This could reflect a shift in generational attitudes toward the military.
In April of this year, Harvard University’s Institute of Politics reported that only 47 percent of young Americans trust the military to do the right thing. This was the first time Harvard had seen that percentage dip below a majority.
Young people are also much less likely than past generations to have personal ties to the military.
In 2011, Pew Research found that just 33 percent of people between 18 and 29 had family members who had served in the military, while 57 to 79 percent of older Americans had military family members.
Even controlling for the “life cycle effect”—unmarried young people do not have spouses, children, and larger extended family networks that might relate them to more military people—the gap still existed.
And while millennials came of age while their country fought two wars, only 2 percent of millennial males are veterans.
