Why Is the U.S. Military Struggling to Find Recruits? Reporter Explains

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, ANCHOR: Well, now the U.S. Army is struggling to fill its ranks. Missy Ryan, national security and defense reporter of The Washington Post, finds a range of reasons for this crisis as she tells Michel Martin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Bianna. And, Missy Ryan, thank you so much for joining us.

MISSY RYAN, NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST: Thank you.

MARTIN: You recently profiled an Army recruiter trying to do his job. You point out in the piece that the Army has missed its recruiting targets for the second year in a row, but every other branch of service, except for the Marines, also missed their recruiting targets in 2023. Why are they having such a hard time?

RYAN: Yes. Well, it’s really — it’s a very multipart answer to your question that really represents a perfect storm of conditions, economic conditions, social conditions, political conditions that have all come together in recent years to cause this significant recruiting crisis for the military. As you say, it’s not just the army that has had a hard time getting enough young people into its ranks to meet its goals, but the Army does represent sort of the biggest problem because it’s the largest branch of the military.

MARTIN: So, let’s just tick through some of the reasons that you identified. One thing that you said in your piece that might be surprising to some people is that you wrote that, only about 23 percent of all Americans between the ages of 17 to 24 meet the Army’s physical, moral, and educational standards. That’s less than — obviously, less than a quarter. So, I mean, I guess we could sort of take those individually. But what’s the sort of the dominant theme here? And it reminds me of the fact that like people forget that like the Free Lunch Program in the United States started because there weren’t enough Americans, you know, sort of in the ’30s and ’40s, you know, after the depression, because malnourishment was something that had become sort of common, that a lot of recruits for World War II didn’t have the — they weren’t ingesting enough calories. They weren’t strong enough to sort of join the service. So, there is a sort of a history of our — seeing some of these things, but that just seems odd in the current environment that, you know, are people not getting enough food or what’s going on here?

RYAN: Yes. I mean, you know, you raise an interesting point, which is the sort of history of the U.S. Armed Forces intertwine nature with American society and the way that has ebbed and flowed and developed apart or together at different moments in American history. And what we’re really seeing at this moment and what was something that we explored in this article was the extent to which, you know, there are many aspects of American society that have really moved away from the requirements that the Armed Forces has, and we see that, for example, in some of the eligibility to serve, and that would be the ability to, for example, meet the minimum requirements for this entry test that the military has, the as fab (ph) as it’s called. There has been a big learning loss drop that occurred after COVID. And so, there’s been a real problem with people getting the minimum requirements. The Army, for example, has rolled out a special sort of remedial course to help people get the minimum scores. There are problems with getting the right sort of body composition requirements. There’s, you know, part of — the Army has another pilot program to help people lose weight in order to meet the requirements. There are people who show up in the afternoons, they at different recruiting stations to try to get their body in shape to be able to join the military. And then, there are things like, you know, drug use and the fact that norms in American society are changing around anti-anxiety, depression, ADHD medication, which are not permitted for people who want to join the military and the use of marijuana. So, you think about the sort of changing norms around all of those things together, there really is a mismatch with the way that the military is trying to find its next generation of recruits. And so, they’re really grappling with that. How do we change our standards? Do we change our standards? What are the things we need to stick to?

MARTIN: Let me just talk about the standards for a minute. Do the standards make sense in the current environment? Because I know that a lot of people of a certain generation have certain prejudices against marijuana use.

RYAN: Yes.

MARTIN: But, I mean, OK. I mean, if people use that recreationally, if it’s legal, I mean, they don’t have a prohibition against people using tobacco and tobacco if used as —

RYAN: Or alcohol.

MARTIN: — the product intended can kill you. Alcohol can kill you, but they don’t have prohibitions on that. Are some of the standards outdated or do they still make sense?

RYAN: I think it depends on who you ask. I think that, you know, there will be — there are a lot of people in the army leadership and the military leadership, generally across the services, who say, yes, we need to cling to certain standards around, you know, academic achievement, for example, around body composition, because, you know, this is a lifestyle that’s not for everybody. We need to make sure that we have young people who are, you know, able to, you know, hit the ground running in certain — you know, with whatever task they’re given, under deployment or, you know, run for cover or whatever. But then, there is a debate about some of the standards and, you know, you bring up marijuana, you know, that is something that the military cannot currently change on its own, even if it wanted to, because it’s subject to, you know, federal law. I think there’s also a very active debate about the rules around ADHD and depression and anxiety medication because many of those things, you know, anxiety, medication, ADHD, are permitted for people once they’re in the military, but there is a requirement for you to be off them for a certain number of years before joining. And so, there’s a really active debate about that. And I think they’re trying to find the right balance about, you know, what do we need for this, you know, cohort of people who is tasked with keeping the nation safe and have this extra responsibility and burden, but at the same time, we need to make it accessible for an adequate number of people.

MARTIN: What about the job market situation? I mean, is that a factor? Because I was thinking about — like, I don’t know if you’ve got the data here, but I was thinking about post-9/11. And I think that people joined irrespective of what the job market was doing. I mean, there are some famous cases, people like, you know, Pat Tillman, who gave up on, you know, NFL career to volunteer. He tragically lost his life in Afghanistan in a friendly fire incident. And so, there’s — but, you know, after 9/11, people said, you know what, I need to serve. I need to contribute. And I just wonder, is the job market really that big of a factor or are there other things?

RYAN: I think, you know, it’s hard to distinguish, you know, how significant one factor is versus another. But absolutely, I think both of those things are factors that, you know, there was a surge in people enlisting after 9/11. Obviously, there’s, you know, a sort of rally around the flag effect if the United States is attacked, we’re no longer in combat operations in the same way that we were at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That clearly has had an effect. But at the same time, you know, the tight job market is a factor because, you know, a lot of the motivation for people enlisting for a long time has been economic. And it’s not just the unemployment, the low unemployment rate, it’s also the sort of structure of our economy is changing. You now have a lot of competition from companies like Starbucks or Walmart that have higher minimum wages, but also, they offer college benefits, which used to just be the military that did that, you know. And so, there’s different kinds of competition, which clearly is good for society, but it is not great for the military when they’re thinking about, you know, what is their comparative advantage.

MARTIN: And then, there was a really interesting piece in this past June in Military.com. It published a piece called The Army’s Recruiting Problem is Male. They found that male enlistments have dropped by 35 percent over the past 10 years, whereas female recruits have hovered around the same. I just found that fascinating. What do you make of that?

RYAN: Yes, you know, there has been a decrease in recruiting from some of the traditional, you know, demographic groups that the military has relied on heavily, you know, the — you know, recruiting among white men has gone down and recruiting from the sort of bible belt areas that, you know, traditionally were the geographic areas in the United States that were stronger has also seen challenges, you know. And nobody really knows why. I mean, you can hypothesize maybe about the politicization of the military that has occurred, you know, in the public discourse in the last, you know, six, eight years, you know, in a notable way. But the — what, you know, the Army and the other services are trying to do is take the military out of that, try to revamp the way they reach people, redo the ad campaigns and reach people in the places where they are now, which might not be, you know, hanging out at the mall because a lot of balls are being shut. It’s reaching people via video games or social media. You know, fewer people enlist right out of high school, so it’s going to community colleges or try to seek people after they get a tertiary degree. So, you know, there’s not one single cause, and there’s not one single answer to the problem either.

MARTIN: I totally get that because you’ve really made that clear, but I am curious about whether, you know, the United States is not currently engaged in a sort of active sort of military engagement that — you know, that is directly related to the U.S. America’s direct interests. OK. So, U.S. is out of Afghanistan. That was a whole messy scene. But then there’s — there are wars in Ukraine. There’s this conflict in Gaza. There are tensions in the Middle East. And, you know, America plays a role in it and having thoughts about that or sort of has diplomatic roles here. I do wonder whether there’s — whether you’ve seen evidence that this ambivalence about what America’s role should be plays into people’s willingness to serve in that way. I mean, where people say, well, this is what I’ll do if I think it’s righteous, but I’m not going to do that if I don’t. Do you know what I mean? I wonder if that’s part of it.

RYAN: I do. You know, I do. You know, when you say ambivalence, I certainly agree that, you know, there is ambivalence about, you know, what — how active the United States should be militarily and just generally around the world. And there certainly isn’t the same urgency when you think about what we need to be doing beyond U.S. borders that there was after 9/11. It’s hard to say what — how big a factor that is. I mean, I certainly think it’s a factor. And you know, the military leadership, obviously, is hoping that, you know, it’ll be a while before the U.S. gets involved in direct combat again. And so, they’ll have to take on the challenge of how do you get a force that’s big enough if we don’t have, you know, forces that are, you know, battling directly adversaries on a battlefield somewhere outside.

MARTIN: Well, in fact, you talked to the secretary of the army about that. I mean, she said that one of the reasons that — it’s not — that’s not the only reason it’s a concern, but if the United States is not in a readiness posture for its own defense, how can you realistically go out and play a peacekeeping role or some kind of role overseas?

RYAN: To me, that gets to the other dimension that we kind of explored in this piece, which is mistrust lack of trust in institutions. And, you know, for decades, the military has been the highest or one of the most highly rated public institutions in America in terms of how people — Americans feel about them. You know, you have the military up here and you have, you know, Congress and journalists kind of down at the bottom, but that has actually taken a hit in the last 10 years, and it’s gone down to levels we haven’t seen in a number of decades. And, you know, I think that there are going back to the politicization of the military, varied reasons behind that. But I do think that, you know, we heard this from people when we were out reporting where, you know, some people’s parents or the potential recruits themselves would say something about, you know, I don’t want to serve the military under X president.

MARTIN: Remember during that scene where Former President Trump went to You know, the park in front of the White House and held up the bible in front of St. John’s Church and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley later apologized, saying, I should not have done that. The whole reason he said that he had to walk that back was that he had to defend the neutrality and integrity of the institution. So, I’m kind of wondering, I’m assuming it’s not just that incident, but —

RYAN: No.

MARTIN: — when people said to you, the politicization of — when you talk about the politicization of the military, what are you talking about and how did people express that to you? What did they say to you?

RYAN: There was a lot around — in 2020 around the conversations about whether ways in which the National Guard could be used against protesters. But there, you know, also a lot of debate about, you know, the extent to which troops should be trained on diversity, initiatives within the military, you know, discussion about extremism and racism around the military and all of those conversations took on sort of outsized importance in, you know, the public discussions or out prominence in some — the way that some Americans think about the military. And, you know, we haven’t quite got back to the places that we were — to the place that we were prior to that yet. And we certainly heard a lot from people whose kids might join the military, from people themselves. So, it’s — you know, it’s — I think, for me, it’s just one more manifestation of the hyper polarization of American society.

MARTIN: One thing that really came clear in your piece, though, is just how hard these recruiters work. I mean, what kind of stood out to you?

RYAN: Yes, they really hustle. I mean, you know, they’re — the — it’s not easy to find people, even just to locate young people to talk to. You know, it’s not like there’s — you know, in a lot of American exurbs, suburbs, you know, people are driving around in their cars and going from one place to another. You know, you’re not finding people congregating out and doing things maybe in the way that you used to. And so, these people have like the extra challenge of finding people, tracking them down. You know, it’s — there’s not a receptivity. Another big challenge is the fact that as fewer people engage in military service, there’s just less familiarity. Like, back after, you know, World War II, everybody had, you know, an uncle, a father who served, you know, everybody knew what the military was, and now, it’s just a smaller and smaller more isolated part of society, and that is sort of a reinforcing vicious circle for the military.

MARTIN: You know, I can’t let you go without asking about this recent dust up around the former president’s behavior at Arlington National Cemetery. I understand it’s one incident among many, and you’ve said several times that this is not just one thing, but I am curious about how you, as a person who spends so much time, you know, reporting on the service and reporting on people, on their efforts to get more people to participate. Gee, what do you make of it?

RYAN: I think that it can only hurt the military’s attempt to kind of rise above the hyper partisan, hyper polarized, hyper acrimonious moment that we’re living. You know, every time there’s an event like that, you know, and you have — it’s very complex. You have people whose family members of the people who died in the Abbey Gate bombing during the, you know, chaotic, disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Some of them are supporting President Trump. You know, you have the military coming out and saying that the campaign disobeyed clear rules. You know, I think there’s a lot of hurt and antagonism and, you know, clear differing interpretations of what happened on all sides. But I think the bottom line is that this only reinforces this trust and perception problem that the military has. And that’s going to have real knock-on effects for national security if it deters more and more people from joining.

MARTIN: Missy Ryan, thank you so much for speaking with us.

RYAN: Thank you.