Strong Economy Poses Recruitment Challenge for the U.S. Army – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/03/strong-economy-poses-a-recruitment-challenge-for-the-us-army
The healthy state of the U.S. economy is posing a challenge for the U.S. Army, which is struggling to lure young people away from the hot job market and into military service.
For the first time since the height of the Iraq War 13 years ago, the U.S. Army failed to reach it recruitment goals for the year, falling thousands of troops short of the target. The issue is especially troubling at a time when President Donald Trump is promising to expand the military.
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Foreign Policy: In September, the Army announced that it failed to meet its recruiting goal of 76,500 new recruits for fiscal year 2018 by 8.5 percent. What are you doing to beef up the Army’s recruitment numbers?
[Army Secretary] Mark Esper ]a former defense industry executive]: We missed our numbers last year, but I was proud that we still put quality over quantity. Despite the miss, we actually had the highest retention rates in the last 10 or 11 years, and we recruited more soldiers, 70,000, than we did in that same time period.