Recession helps military recruiters reach 36-year high

Aided by the slumping economy and generous funding, the military had its best recruiting year in the 36-year history of its all-volunteer force in fiscal 2009, a defense official announced Tuesday.

"For the first time since the advent of the all-volunteer force, all the military components, active and reserve, met their numerical and quality goals," Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, said at a Pentagon briefing.

The four services and their National Guard and reserve components signed up 296,505 young men and women, of which 96 percent of active-duty recruits and 95 percent of new reservists had high school diplomas, the highest rate since 1996, Carr said. Nearly three-fourths scored at or above the 50 percentile on the armed forces qualification exams, the best since 2002.

Defense Department quality objectives are 90 percent high school graduates and 60 percent in the upper half of test results.

The services also had to grant fewer waivers for conduct or medical problems than in recent years, with fewer than 20 percent requiring an exemption to the standards, Carr said. Two-thirds of the waivers were for misconduct, which did not result in jail sentences, and one-third were for medical issues, mostly obesity, he said.

Carr acknowledged that the bad economy, which has driven the national unemployment rate to nearly 10 percent, "was a force" in the recruiting success. The services also benefited from a high level of fiscal 2009 funding for recruiters and advertising, because the full scale of the economic recession had not been anticipated.

Although the services will need to attract nearly the same number of recruits, the fiscal 2010 recruiting budget is about 11 percent below last year's $3.1 billion, which could be an issue if the economy rebounds, Carr said.

The active Army, which had the highest recruiting goal in its effort to ease a punishing deployment cycle for Iraq and Afghanistan and has had trouble attracting all the soldiers it needs, exceeded its goal of 65,000 recruits by 5,045. And 95 percent of its new soldiers had high school diplomas or the equivalent and 65 percent scored in the upper half on the exams, far above recent results.

The Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, which are seeking to maintain their current active duty personnel levels, all went just over their goals, for a total result of 103 percent of the objective.

And despite a high rate of active-duty call-up of reserve personnel, the Army National Guard went slightly over its quota, the Army Reserve recruited 105 percent of its goal and the Marine Corps Reserve hit 122 percent of its goal. Meanwhile, the Air Force Reserve, Air Guard and Navy Reserve slightly exceeded their goals, for a total of 104 percent of the objective.