Army’s Recruiters Miss Target For Enlistees in Latest Month

Reserves Fall 45% Short
Of Goal, While Gap Is 30%
In Regular Force Sign-Ups

By CHRISTOPHER COOPER and GREG JAFFE

For the second straight year, U.S. Army recruiters fell short of their goal for signing up enlistees in the first month of a new recruiting cycle.

For the first 30-day period in its new recruiting year, the Army was 30% shy of its goal of signing up 7,274 recruits. The Army had a particularly hard time recruiting for the Army Reserve, on which the Pentagon has relied heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Enlistments for the reserves were 45% below the target.

In the same period last year, the Army came up 25% short in its goal in the first month for enlisting 6,220 regular recruits and 40% short of its reserve enlistment goal.

The monthly targets are used as guideposts by the Army toward its ultimate recruiting goals. They refer to the number of people it hopes to sign up who promise to report for duty within a 12-month period. But it measures its ultimate success in any given year by the number of people who actually report for duty. A rush of recruits reporting for duty late in the year thus can compensate for weak sign-up numbers early in a year.

But the Army does faces some challenges this year. One is its increased goal of boosting the number of soldiers who report for duty by 3.8%, to about 80,000, which is in keeping with congressional mandates to build the force. In the next few years, the Pentagon wants to increase the size of the active-duty Army force temporarily by about 30,000 to roughly 510,000.

Another is the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some senior Pentagon officials say the wars are almost certain to hurt recruiting efforts, especially for reserves, who have been called up for active duty in large numbers.

A third challenge stems from the Army’s complicated system of counting recruits. While new enlistees count toward the monthly recruiting goals, they aren’t typically included in the final tally of new soldiers until they report for duty. Because of that difference, the Army often starts the new fiscal year with large numbers of recruits who can be expected to report for duty in the coming year, thus helping fulfill the yearly goal. Monthly targets depend in part on how large that "bank" of pending soldiers is; generally, the more soldiers due to report for duty, the lower the monthly goals for signing up new ones.

But this year, the Army entered fiscal 2005 with an unusually low number of recruits in the bank, about 16,000, or 21% of its overall goal for the year. By contrast, a year ago, it began fiscal 2004 with 33,000 prospective soldiers — meaning 45% of its recruiting goal already had been met. That also means its monthly goals in fiscal 2005 are higher than they were a year ago.

The reason for the gap: To make its numbers in fiscal 2004, the Army pushed many new enlistees into reporting for duty within a month. While that helped it make its 2004 goal, it depleted the bank for this year.

Col. Rock Dillard of the Army’s recruiting staff says he remains confident that the enlistment goals can be met. "We know we have problems, but it’s early in the year and we’ll put resources to it," he said. "It’s a bit of a race: Your surge is near the finish line."

As it has in the past, the Army has responded to shortfalls by offering larger cash incentives. It recently bumped up the amount it will pay toward enlistees’ college tuition by 50% to $75,000 and increased cash bonuses. Many recruits can get bonuses of $15,000 or more if they offer certain skills in demand and agree to report for duty in one month or less. The Army also said recently it plans to add 1,000 recruiters nationwide.

Write to Christopher Cooper at christopher.cooper@wsj.com and Greg Jaffe at greg.jaffe@wsj.com

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