Air Force may miss recruiting goal for first time in decades
For the first time in more than 20 years, the Air Force could fall short of its recruitment goal.
“It's likely that we could miss by 10 percent or more,” said Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, Air Force Recruiting Service's commander. “And by the way, that accounts to about 3,000 airmen roughly — or an equivalent of a fighter wing.”
Military recruiting is in a slump, thanks to little interest among young people, a tight labor market with abundant jobs and a dearth of qualified applicants.
It doesn't help that the Air Force nearly drained its Delayed Entry Program reserve over the past fiscal year to get enough recruits into the training pipeline at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Before, the Air Force could tap the program's pool of recruits when more were needed to go to basic military training. Now, that reserve is depleted.
The Air Force barely made its active-duty recruiting goal of 27,215 in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, and the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard fell short of their goals — 8,200 and 9,198, respectively.
The active-duty goal is similar this year — 26,877 recruits. The Air National Guard hopes to sign 12,941 recruits, while the reserve's goal is 9,300.
A ceremony Tuesday at Joint Base San AntonioRandolph was a celebration of excellence in recruiting, but Thomas took the opportunity to remind the Air Force's best 18 recruiters and thousands of others of the challenge they face in the coming six months.
“This is indeed the toughest recruiting environment that we have faced since 1974, the advent of the all-volunteer force,” Thomas said.
Operation Blue Suit is a weeklong event in San Antonio sponsored by Air Force Recruiting Alumni Association, with the help
of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and local businesses.
The top recruiters, who included Tech Sgt. Mario Soriano, walked with their spouses Tuesday morning under an arch of sabers provided by the Randolph High School JROTC saber team at Fleenor Auditorium in Randolph’s Taj Mahal.
They competed with more than 2,100 of their peers in the annual contest, which dates back to 1979.
At 31, Soriano shipped 91 recruits to basic training in San Antonio, far above the 30 to 50 people a typical recruiter signs in a year.
“A lot of early mornings, late nights, coordination with my spouse, a little time away from things I like to do, but I know ultimately there is a bigger goal, and that goal was to find those Americans that are interested in joining,” he said when asked how he did it. “I knew there were people out there who need the Air Force.”
He and his wife, Sanjuana, raise two children, Mario Soriano III and Emma, in Hawaii.
“We have to ride long rides in the vehicle for recruiting,” she said. “We have to stay quiet so he can talk to the applicants in the evenings and on the weekends. So last night, I was talking to them, and I wanted to tell them, like the general’s wife told me, that they’re serving their country as well.”
For the Air Force, 2022 was a struggle — the hardest in five years — but it wasn’t alone. All the services faced a headwind that hasn’t abated. The problems are the same.
Only one in five military-age young people is qualified to serve in the first place. Some are overweight or suffer from medical problems that exclude them from service, while others are drug abusers or in trouble with the law.
The services also have adjusted to changing times — including the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced them to use social media in ways they’d never imagined. It was a poor substitute for recruiters hitting high schools and the mall in search of young people who might be interested in serving.
Worsening the difficulties, some of the military’s own rules excluded segments of the population. One example: Tattoos used to be a big barrier for people interested in joining the armed services.
But just weeks ago, the Air Force liberalized its guidelines.
Air Force rules allowed ring tattoos limited to a single band on one hand. Now, in addition to the ring tattoo, a single tattoo is authorized on each hand — but not exceeding 1 inch.
One tattoo on the neck is allowed if it also doesn’t exceed 1 inch. It cannot extend in front of the earlobe.
Obscene tattoos are still prohibited, and so are those commonly associated with gangs or white supremacist organizations, or that advocate sexual, racial, ethnic or religious discrimination.
The Air Force and other branches last year dangled bonuses in front of potential recruits. This year, the Air Force is basing some cyber career fields on the member’s highest level of certification, giving applicants a chance to get bonuses of up to $20,000. Special warfare recruits can do even better, collecting bonuses worth $40,000.
In a tweet Monday, the Army’s Sergeant Major Michael Grinston announced that low-ranking soldiers could earn a promotion by successfully referring someone to enlist.
Yet the biggest problem of all for the San Antoniobased recruiting service may be convincing people to join. Fewer than one in 10 prospective airmen express an interest in entering the military.
Thomas said 65 percent of potential recruits worry they’ll leave military service physically or psychologically broken. He blamed the problem partly on television commercials depicting veterans suffering from war-related injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder.
“You’ll turn on CNN and see Mark Wahlberg doing Wounded Warrior commercials, for instance,” said Thomas, whose command oversees 2,400 active-duty, guard and reserve recruiters in 1,900 offices across the United States and abroad. “They’re great organizations, but the impact for people who do not understand the military or don’t personally know anyone in the military — it forms a very clear and negative perception of military service.”
Tech Sgt. Taylor Ogden, 30, a recruiter assigned to New York’s Hudson Valley region, battles stigmas that complicate her efforts to recruit people.
“I think a lot of people don’t understand the career fields that we have in (the Air Force),” she said. “Maybe they think more of the infantry. They don’t realize we have a variety of career fields. We have everything from paralegals to medical, our Security Forces squadron. We just have so many different career fields that people could benefit from that translate to jobs in the outside world.”
Fixing the Delayed Entry Program reserve is a high-priority job.
The DEP bank, as it’s called, usually has a quarter of all the recruits needed at the start of every new campaign year. But it’s been dried up like a Texas lake in August.
The recruiting service typically wants to have as many as 27 percent of its applicants in the DEP, but it now hovers at no higher than 12 percent of the yearly total.
“It’s going to take a couple of years to be able to get through this current challenge,” Thomas said.
The healthy economy is another major obstacle to finding recruits. The national unemployment rate is a low 3.6 percent, with 4 million more jobs available than there are people to fill them.
The longer-term challenge, however, is the lack of familiarity and eligibility.
Thomas said familiarity is the biggest problem.
“Today, Americans are less familiar with the American military than they ever have been,” he said. “So we reintroduce ourselves to America.”
Eligibility to serve is also worse than ever. Only 23 percent of American youths ages 17-21 are qualified to serve in the military — because of criminal records, health problems or other reasons — without a waiver of some kind.
But the Air Force doesn’t issue waivers.
“We have kept a sharp focus on maintaining high-quality recruits in the Air Force at the expense of potentially missing our goal,” Thomas said.
“The Air Force model is also different from some other services,” he added. “We recruit to retain airmen long-term. We invest in their medical training, their skills or knowledge and their education.”