Bloomington Indiana US Army recruiting station
(Devan Ridgway, WFIU/WTIU News)
U.S. Army recruiters take down names, hand out information, and work a bouldering wall at the Indiana State Fair. They’ll be there through the fair’s close on August 21.
It’s the second largest in-person recruitment effort for Indiana army recruiters in the last few years.
And Sgt. Robert Morehouse said that’s part of the reason the army hasn’t met its recruitment goals in recent years. His battalion covers Indiana going up to Fort Wayne and parts of Missouri.
“I believe that if more people could hear our message and hear how beneficial the army is towards them, and help them out; we may not be in the situation we are currently in.”
US Army recruiters at the Indiana State Fair. (WFIU/WTIU News)
He said they tried to shift gears to keep numbers up during the pandemic, leaning more heavily on social media. But there's only so many people you can reach through Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook.
Recruitment numbers have been going down since the 1970s, when army active enrollment was at a high of more than 1,500,000. In 2014, active army members were at more than 515,000.
Drops in new members have recruiters busy. This summer, U.S. Army officials predicted that its force will total 466,000 by the end of the fiscal year.
Morehouse said his battalion is short about 1,000 recruits going back to fiscal year 2019.
The unemployment rate reached highs in the mid-teens during the pandemic. Before, it hovered around 3 percent in 2019. Morehouse said the market is competitive right now, and young people are more selective about benefits.
“That's our targeted demographic, all the way up to the age 35. And give them a skill, while paying them a fair wage, and providing all the other benefits that we just spoke about. It's not just the money for college, it's the intangibles as well. The free medical and the free dental for you and your family. And a paid vacation up to 30 days.”
The sustained drop in recruits can be partly blamed on a decreasing pool of applicants who can be accepted without a waiver. The U.S. Army reported 23 percent of Americans 17 to 24 years old are fully qualified to serve.
For people who score lower on the military’s aptitude test (the ASVAB) or don’t meet fitness standards, the army launched a 90-day program, the Future Soldier Preparatory Course.
Commander Jovanny Carrion Chaparro commutes between a few recruiting stations in southern Indiana, including Bloomington’s.
He said part of the challenge is explaining to people the army is more than just combat jobs which he says only make up about 15 to 20 percent of positions.
Jovanny Carrion Chaparro at the Bloomington recruiting station. (WFIU/WTIU News)
"When I was trying to get in, I could just go into a recruiting station, no lockdown or anything," he said. "But I think those two years of the pandemic and just it just added an extra hurdle in the process of getting our message out there.”
The struggle for recruits is something Alain Samples with the Indiana National Guard noticed too. She said in 2019 around 5,400 people were joining all branches of service in Indiana, and Indiana National Guard was getting 30 percent of those.
"We've seen ups and downs over the past couple of years," she said. "But it's quite a big difference. When you look at what we're going into now we're looking at around 4,000 for this year, and it can be as few as 3,000 going into next year, according to our predictive models.”
She said it’s troubling because the National Guard was an essential part of Indiana’s COVID-19 response plans, and lower recruitment could hurt their ability to meet state needs.
“And you know, when there are floods when there are tornadoes, we had the COVID response this past year. The Indiana Army National Guard really showed up for the state of Indiana over the past couple of years, and we want to continue to be able to do that.”
Morehouse is concerned about how recruitment will affect operations for the army too, though he doesn’t think it’s time to raise alarms.
"I think we're always going to have an army, there's always going to be those ones that find the higher purpose to answer the calling. I mean, I think that's always going to happen.”
He added employment trends and the economy heavily influence their ability to recruit and people’s interest in joining, and it will take time to find viable solutions.
