Active Army, Reserve, will meet recruiting targets | Army Times

The Army and its Reserve component will meet their recruiting goals for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, powered in part by a surge in women who want to be soldiers, the service announced Tuesday.



Last year, Army recruiters struggled but met their quota of 59,000 active-duty recruits. Even though the Army is reducing its ranks, the target of 62,500 recruits for 2016 was higher. That’s because the Army cycles through tens of thousands of young soldiers each year in its combat and support units.




This year’s success is a credit to the force of 9,000 recruiters, said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Snow, who leads the Army’s recruiting command. Typically, recruiting success correlates with high unemployment. An improving economy typically means that young men and women opt for jobs in the private sector.




“It’s a tough mission,” Snow said. “The recruiters have done a phenomenal job.”
The quality of recruits remains high, Snow said, with 0.6 percent of active-duty recruits belonging to what’s known as Category 4. These are recruits who score in the lower third on standard military tests. The military caps Category 4 recruits at 2 percent. In 2005, during the toughest recent recruiting environment with the wars raging, the Pentagon relaxed the standard to 4 percent of recruits.




“The Army is not something of last resort,” Snow said. “There’s tremendous potential here.”




The percentage of women enlisting is the highest in more than a decade, Kelli Bland, a recruiting command spokeswoman. About 17.5 percent of Army recruits in 2016 are women, a half-percentage-point increase over last year. Equal pay for equal work is one element of an Army career that women may find appealing, Snow said.
The Pentagon opened all military jobs, including infantry and special operations specialties, to women at the beginning of the year. About 200 women signed up for Army infantry and armor units in 2016, Bland said.




Recruiters are also likely to hit their goal of 15,400 soldiers for the Reserve, Snow said.




The hotbed of Army recruiting remains the Southeast. Draw a boundary from North Carolina to Texas, and you’ll find the best source of talent for the Army, Snow said.




The Army is seeking to make inroads in other parts of the country, and has had some success in the northeast and Pacific coast, Snow said.

There are about 460,000 soldiers in the Army, and it is scheduled to reduce its force to 450,000 by 2018.