The U.S. Army has several levers at its disposal to try to meet its recruiting mission, with resources jointly used for both Regular Army (RA) and U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) accessions. These resources differ in their cost per additional recruit produced and the lead time necessary to change individual resourcing levels and affect enlistments. The Army can also modify recruit eligibility policies to help it achieve its accession requirement within available resources. Recruiting resources and enlistment eligibility policies work together as a system to produce RA and USAR recruits, and understanding their interactions under varying requirements and environments enables decisionmakers to use their limited resources more effectively and efficiently to achieve the Army's accession requirements. The authors present a model-the Reserve Recruiting Resource Model (RRRM)-designed to optimize the resource levels and mix needed to achieve future USAR recruiting goals under changing enlisted accession requirements and recruiting environments and alternative eligibility policies for potential recruits. The model also enables comparison of alternative courses of action. This research builds on prior work by the RAND Arroyo Center on the effectiveness and lead times of alternative recruiting resources. In their results, the authors discuss using the RRRM to predict annual accessions from a specified baseline resourcing plan and provide several examples of how the tool can be used to assess potential recruiting resource and policy trade-offs or to prepare for alternative recruiting requirements via optimization of recruiting resources used for USAR recruiting.

The purpose of this research is to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the Army's use of recruiting resources and policies. A theoretical model was estimated based on the Army's recruiting experience. Using this model, a tool was created for the Army's use in assessing alternative courses of action and optimizing resource levels and mix under alternative enlisted accession goals, labor market conditions, and recruit eligibility policies.

The authors of this report draw on a large body of research on recruiting and examine tools and resources--including recruiters and recruiting management, eligibility criteria, and pay and bonuses--that can help the Army meet recruiting challenges.

Recruiting an all-volunteer military is a formidable task. To successfully enlist one eligible recruit, the Army must contact approximately 120 young people. The National Research Council explores the various factors that will determine whether the military can realistically expect to recruit an adequate fighting force-one that will meet its upcoming needs. It also assesses the military's expected manpower needs and projects the numbers of youth who are likely to be available over the next 20 years to meet these needs. With clearly written text and useful graphics, Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth offers an overview of important issues for military recruiters, touching on a number of important topics including: sex and race, education and aptitude, physical and moral attributes, and military life and working conditions. In addition, the book looks at how a potential recruit would approach the decision to enlist, considering personal, family, and social values, and the options for other employment or college. Building on the need to increase young Americans' "propensity to enlist," this book offers useful recommendations for increasing educational opportunities while in the service and for developing advertising strategies that include concepts of patriotism and duty to country. Of primary value to military policymakers, recruitment officers, and analysts, Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth will also interest social scientists and policy makers interested in youth trends.

Can America continue to maintain its military commitments without conscription?

The authors identified current, desired, and prospective data-enabled practices that the U.S. Department of Defense and the services might be able to deploy in their outreach and recruiting processes.

RAND researchers compared military and civilian pay for 2016, following up on comparisons for 2009 and 1999, and assessed how recruit quality changed as military pay rose relative to civilian pay after 1999.