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Summary

This report provides a brief overview of the recruiting and retention rates for Active and Reserve Component enlisted personnel during FY2008 and FY2009. Since 2001, the United States has launched major military operations which have dramatically increased the operations tempo of the military services, required the large scale mobilization of reservists, and resulted in significant battle casualties. These factors have been particularly applicable to the Army, Army Reserve, Army National Guard, Marine Corps, and Marine Corps Reserve, which have shouldered the bulk of the manpower burden associated with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many observers have expressed concern that these factors would lead to lower recruiting and retention rates and jeopardize the vitality of today's all-volunteer military. These concerns were most notable in FY2005-FY2007, when the Army had difficulty meeting its quantity goals and accepted lower quality recruits. However, these concerns have recently been mitigated by the more favorable recruiting and retention environment brought about by rising unemployment rates and the improved security situation in Iraq, coupled with reduced recruiting goals for the Army and Marine Corps now that both of those services have completed major expansions. Recruiting and retention results for FY2008 and FY2009 are summarized below. This report will be updated as necessary. FY2008--Active Components. All the Services achieved their recruit quantity goals. The Army again missed the goal for High School Diploma Graduates, one of the Department of Defense's key quality benchmarks, though by a lesser amount than in FY2007. The other Services met or exceeded both of the established benchmarks. The Army also exceeded its retention goals and the Navy only fell short of its mid-career goal by a very small margin. While exceeding its career retention goal, the Marine Corps fell significantly short of its first-term retention goal. However, this should be viewed in light of a large first-term retention goal, which was related to increasing the size of the Marine Corps. The Air Force missed all three of its retention goals by large margins, although the results appear to have been distorted by the implementation of new goal-setting and achievement-measuring methodologies by the Air Force. FY2008--Reserve Components. All of the Reserve Components met their recruit quantity goals. While showing improvement over FY2007, the Army Reserve just missed meeting both of the quality indicators and the Army National Guard just missed the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) benchmark. All of the Reserve Components met their retention goals except for the Air Force Reserve, which missed its goal by a small margin. FY2009--Active Components. All the Services achieved their recruit quantity goals while increasing recruit quality. This was particularly noticeable for the Army, which saw a surge in recruit quality compared to FY2005-FY2008. Retention has also been very strong. All of the Services exceeded their retention goals, with the Army and Marine Corps doing so by sizable margins. FY2009--Reserve Components. All of the Reserve Components met or exceeded their recruit quantity goals, while increasing the level of recruit quality. Both the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard--which had failed to meet one or both quality benchmarks in prior years--exceeded the quality benchmarks. Through August, all of the reserve components were comfortably on track to meet their annual retention goals.

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