May 2022 — MHCE
News from MHCE MAY 2022 EDITION Russian Soldier Pleads Guilty at Ukraine War Crimes Trial See page 22 Monthly Newsletter Military Throwing Cash at Recruiting Crisis as Troops Head for the Exits Hints that the armed services might soon face a problem keeping their ranks full began quietly, with officials spending the last decade warning that a dwindling slice of the American public could serve. Only about one-quarter of young Americans are even eligible for service these days, a shrinking pool limited by an increasing number of potential recruits who are overweight or are screened out due to minor criminal infractions, including the use of recreational drugs such as marijuana. But what had been a slowmoving trend is reaching crisis levels, as a highly competitive job market converges with a mass of troops leaving as the coronavirus pandemic subsides, alarming military planners. "Not two years into a pandemic, and we have warning lights flashing," Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, the Air Force Recruiting Service commander, wrote in a memo -- leaked in January -- about the headwinds his team faces. For now, the services are leaning on record-level enlistment and retention bonuses meant to attract and keep America's military staffed and ready -- bonuses that continue to climb. In an interview with Military.com last month, Thomas didn't mince words. He knows he is competing against the private sector to hire people, from technology giants to regional gas stations. "If you want to work at Buc-ee's along I-35 in Texas, you can do it for [a] -an-hour starting salary," Thomas said. "You can start at Target for an hour with educational benefits. So you start looking at the competition: Starbucks, Google, Amazon. The battle for talent amidst this current labor shortage is intense." Paired with those competitive offers for workers are a large number of service members retiring, some having delayed leaving the ranks during a pandemic that saw huge instability in the job market. Since fiscal 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor's Veterans' Employment and Training Service -- known as VETS -- has anticipated that around 150,000 service members would transition out of the military annually as part of its budget justification documents. But in 2020, the Transition Assistance Program, or TAP, the congressionally mandated classes that prepare troops for life outside the military, helped counsel 193,968 service members on their way out of the military, said Lisa Lawrence, a Pentagon spokesperson. That's nearly onethird more newly minted veterans than the Labor Department had planned for. In 2021, that number grew to 196,413. Prior to 2020, the Department of Defense did not report the total number of TAP-eligible service members transitioning, although Lawrence said the number has been somewhere between 190,000 and 200,000 annually in recent years. Payouts aimed at attracting new service members to replace those outgoing veterans are at all-time highs. The Army started offering recruiting bonuses of up to ,000 in January, and last month the Air Force began promoting up to ,000 -- the most it can legally offer -- for certain career fields. The Navy followed with its offer of ,000 to those willing to ship out in a matter of weeks. It says the bonuses are the result of an WWW.MHCE.US "unprecedentedly competitive job market." Cmdr. Dave Benham, a spokesman for the sea service's recruiting command, told Military.com in a recent phone interview that "the private sector is doing things we haven't seen them do before to try and attract talent, so we have to stay competitive." Benham said the scope of the Navy's offer -- a minimum of ,000 to ship out before June -- has "never happened before to anybody's collective knowledge around here." Courting and Paying for Talent The pandemic economy has placed private-sector workers in the driver's seat, pushing employers to offer more lucrative incentives such as better benefits, flexible work-from-home schedules or massive signing bonuses to make hires. That is putting major pressure on the military as it tries to attract recruits who may be considering the civilian job market. It's all been complicated by the military's myriad of other difficulties getting new troops in the door, such as recruiting efforts quashed by the pandemic, a shrinking pool of eligible recruits, and social media silos complicating advertising. And amid public scandals, such as the 2020 murder of Vanessa Guillén and suicides on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, military service may seem like a less attractive choice for young Americans. Continued on page 13
