Socio-Demographics and Military Recruiting: The Role of Veterans
Abstract
Who serves in the military? Representation has always been an important public policy issue. From the recruiting perspective, the services want to know where the market is and where to place resources. They also want to know how the market is evolving to plan for the future. Military recruiting is in the midst of several "sea changes". The most notable of these has been the decline in the numbers of new recruits in recent years. Enlisted recruiting is now stabilizing at around 200,000 recruits annually, down from 278,000 in 1989, the last year prior to the post-cold war draw down. However, the decline in numbers recruited was accompanied by an increasing focus on high quality recruits, where high quality is defined as high school graduates with test scores at the 50th percentile or above on the Armed Forces Qualifying Test. Rather than reduce recruiting resources, the services have increased quality standards. High quality enlistments today constitute over two-thirds of all recruits (Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, 1995).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA363992
Entities
People
- Andrea Boyer
- Edward Schmitz