Soldiers take an oath of service during a mass re-enlistment at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, Wednesday, June 14, 2023. (Christian Cote/U.S. Army Reserve)
WASHINGTON — The Army already has met its goal for 2023 of keeping more than 50,000 troops in its ranks as the military struggles with attracting enough recruits, the service’s top enlisted soldier said.
“Once soldiers join the military, they want to stay,” Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston said Wednesday at a ceremony commemorating the service’s 248th birthday.
Grinston first acknowledged the Army has surpassed this year’s target at a birthday celebration held at Fort Belvoir, Va., on Saturday.
The Army’s retention goal for fiscal 2023, which ends Sept. 30, is 55,100 soldiers, according to congressional testimony in March by Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo. Last year, the Army also surpassed its retention goal by keeping more than 58,000 soldiers in the service.
The Army’s success in retaining soldiers supports a message that military recruiters have been trying to spread for years that more people would serve if they only knew how much they would like military life.
“When soldiers decide to join the Army, they actually decide to stay,” Grinston said. “They know they can be all they can be.”
Gen. James McConville, chief of staff of the Army, reenlisted a group of 30 soldiers during Wednesday’s ceremony.
“We have to put our people first,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said. “We can’t take for granted the willingness of young Americans to volunteer to serve, nor can we stop looking for ways to figure out how to improve our recruiting efforts.”
Though the Army has been meeting its retention goals, hitting recruiting targets has been a problem. The Army hopes to enlist 65,000 new soldiers before fiscal 2023 ends, but Wormuth has acknowledged that will be a tough goal to meet.
Recruiting women into the Army is even more difficult. Recruitment is down 29% overall since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and among younger women it’s down 31%, the service told the Defense Advisory Committee for Women in the Services. Fear of sexual assault or harassment is a top concern among young women, while others do not see military service as aligned with their aspirations, according to Army Recruiting Command.
One of the biggest problems is the candidate pool of young recruits is smaller than it used to be, officials have said. Recent Pentagon data have shown just 23% of Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 meet the academic and physical requirements to serve. To help recruiters, the services are offering many enlistment incentives and attacking the root cause with development programs to help recruits pass basic training fitness and academic tests.
Army officials have said the preparatory courses for recruits have been tremendously successful.
