Recruitment is self correcting—crisis proponents are bias.

The source of these dubious statistics appears to be the Council for a Strong America, a liberal advocacy group whose solution to military-recruitment problems is more public preschool. Its “Mission: Readiness” subsidiary has a dire report on military recruiting, but it offers no data analysis – just assertions from military officials. For example, its evidence that “one out of four young Americans lacks a high school diploma” is a personal communication from a military analyst. (In fact, most of the report promotes old chestnuts like Perry Preschool and the Abecedarian program. I suspect that “Mission: Readiness,” whose funders include Pre-K Now and the Birth To Five Policy Alliance, is a lot more interested in preschool than it is in the military.) Overall, the recruitment problem is probably overblown. Some eligibility constraints are hard to change, such as AFQT and criminality, but others are easier. The military is quite good at getting people in shape, so the fitness problem seems manageable. As for getting young people interested in signing up, there are probably many steps that could be taken to make the services more appealing, including higher recruitment bonuses when the private-sector labor market is strong (such as now). The broader point here is that the number of potential recruits is partly a function of how badly the military wants recruits in the first place. Trying to put a single number on who is eligible, assuming no other policy changes, does not seem all that helpful. Again, maybe I’m wrong to be skeptical of a recruiting crisis, but the evidence presented so far is not convincing.