thedrifter
11-26-07, 07:56 AM
Military Recruiting Numbers [W. Thomas Smith Jr.]
A Gilroy, California reader e-mails:
I watched the interview with James Brady and Matt Lauer and they were mentioning low recruitment levels – except the Marines of course. These numbers always seem to conflict depending on who is reporting them. Lauer was quick to mention that they were not met, but I had just read that all branches had met or exceeded their goals. What gives?
Do you see any misreporting of the stats, or do the numbers just naturally fluctuate month to month?
Thank you for your service and keep up your excellent work.
Speaking of Marines we just sent off a young man at our church to Camp Pendleton for basic a couple of weeks ago. Also, an old school buddy who served in Iraq in ’05 and last year retired from the Marines after 25 years has signed back up for another tour this coming January at age 46 –such is his devotion to the cause.
May God’s grace and protection go before them all.
Excellent recruiting question. First, yes, recruiting numbers do fluctuate each month, and they are released by the Defense Department usually by the 10th or the 11th of each month for the previous month. At "The Tank" we always bring you those numbers, usually within hours of those numbers being released.
Now, has the Marine Corps met or exceeded goal every month for the past several years? Off the top of my head — and I do follow the numbers closely — I cannot remember a month in recent history where the Corps did not meet or exceed goal. In fact, it's almost always far above goal, like 110 or 140 percent of goal.
Of course, the naysayers will argue that the Corps has lowered standards since the beginning of the Iraq War in order to achieve those percentages. On the contrary, the Corps has not only toughened its already tough standards (from enlistment signing through boot camp graduation), but those extremely high recruiting-goal percentages have been achieved even when actual required numbers of new recruits — as directed by DoD — have increased.
Granted, the Army has not been as successful as the Marine Corps in its own recruiting: And there are a few reasons why, chief among them is that fact that the Army is much larger than the Corps. Consequently, recruiters have to bring in a lot more recruits each month than the Marine Corps.
That said, the Army's recruiting woes are not nearly as bad as many in the media have proclaimed them to be. Every now-and-then they dip below 100 percent for a given month: even so, they are still almost always in the 90-plus percentile range during those occasional so-called "struggling" months. And 90-plus percent when most months are above 100 percent, is not what I would consider to be "struggling."
And if you look at Fiscal Year numbers for 2007, which were released last month, all services met or exceeded goal for 2007. And they did so in time of war.
In my estimation, that is nothing short of amazing.
Ellie
A Gilroy, California reader e-mails:
I watched the interview with James Brady and Matt Lauer and they were mentioning low recruitment levels – except the Marines of course. These numbers always seem to conflict depending on who is reporting them. Lauer was quick to mention that they were not met, but I had just read that all branches had met or exceeded their goals. What gives?
Do you see any misreporting of the stats, or do the numbers just naturally fluctuate month to month?
Thank you for your service and keep up your excellent work.
Speaking of Marines we just sent off a young man at our church to Camp Pendleton for basic a couple of weeks ago. Also, an old school buddy who served in Iraq in ’05 and last year retired from the Marines after 25 years has signed back up for another tour this coming January at age 46 –such is his devotion to the cause.
May God’s grace and protection go before them all.
Excellent recruiting question. First, yes, recruiting numbers do fluctuate each month, and they are released by the Defense Department usually by the 10th or the 11th of each month for the previous month. At "The Tank" we always bring you those numbers, usually within hours of those numbers being released.
Now, has the Marine Corps met or exceeded goal every month for the past several years? Off the top of my head — and I do follow the numbers closely — I cannot remember a month in recent history where the Corps did not meet or exceed goal. In fact, it's almost always far above goal, like 110 or 140 percent of goal.
Of course, the naysayers will argue that the Corps has lowered standards since the beginning of the Iraq War in order to achieve those percentages. On the contrary, the Corps has not only toughened its already tough standards (from enlistment signing through boot camp graduation), but those extremely high recruiting-goal percentages have been achieved even when actual required numbers of new recruits — as directed by DoD — have increased.
Granted, the Army has not been as successful as the Marine Corps in its own recruiting: And there are a few reasons why, chief among them is that fact that the Army is much larger than the Corps. Consequently, recruiters have to bring in a lot more recruits each month than the Marine Corps.
That said, the Army's recruiting woes are not nearly as bad as many in the media have proclaimed them to be. Every now-and-then they dip below 100 percent for a given month: even so, they are still almost always in the 90-plus percentile range during those occasional so-called "struggling" months. And 90-plus percent when most months are above 100 percent, is not what I would consider to be "struggling."
And if you look at Fiscal Year numbers for 2007, which were released last month, all services met or exceeded goal for 2007. And they did so in time of war.
In my estimation, that is nothing short of amazing.
Ellie