QUESTION: recruitment goal numbers

Counterrecruiter.net speculates that the military is deliberately lowering its recruiting goals in order to avoid continuing shortfalls (i.e., we made our goal even though we lowered it)

http://rncwatch.typepad.com/counterrecruiter/2005/06/is_the_army_dis.html

Is there any way to get the recruitment goal numbers from previous months in previous years, (e.g., to allow comparison between goals in June 2003, June 2004, and June 2005)?

It seems like these numbers must be out there, but the DoD website is (surprise!) impossible to get information from.

ANSWER: recruitment goal numbers

I didn't find reports from June 2003, 2004, and 2005 for easy comparison or that exactly support what you're after. Finding those numbers for each specific force (i.e. Air Force, Army, Marines, Navy, the Reserves for each.) might be more doable by searching the news releases on the DoD site. Another problem is that it seems that they work by fiscal, rather than calendar, year, so there won't be any 2005 figures.

Here's a nice chart from http://www.dod.mil/comptroller/par/fy2004/06-01_Detailed_Performance.pdf, page 19, accessed July 2, 2005.

I've retyped this chart from http://www.asafm.army.mil/fo/fod/cfo/afr/currentyr/two.pdf, page 10, accessed July 2, 2005.

Table 1: Recruiting	2002 Actual	2003 Actual	2004 Goal	2004 Actual
Active Army	79,585	74,132	77,000	77,587
Army Reserve	41,697	27,365	32,275	32,699
Army National Guard	63,251	84,202	56,002	49,210

The info from this retyped chart, doesn't entirely match http://www.dod.mil/comptroller/par/fy2004/06-01_Detailed_Performance.pdf, page 31, accessed July 2, 2005, but that may be because it's from the 3rd quarter.

Enlisted Recruiting: FY 2004 Performance Through 3rd Quarter
Army, Active	55,607 target	56,165 achieved
Navy, Active	25,729 target	25,723 achieved
Air Force, Active	26,790 target	27,082 achieved
Marine Corps, Active	19,761 target	19,930 achieved

I found this graphic from the CQ Homeland Security database http://homeland.cq.com.mizuna.cc.columbia.edu:2048
/graphics/weekly/2003/08/02/wr20030802-31troops-map.pdf (subscription database). "Where is the Army Today?" CQ Weekly, August 2, 2003. 1980.

Another adorable graphic from http://www.defenselink.mil/execsec/adr2003/pdf_files/04_Force_Management.pdf, accessed July 2, 2005, page 10.

I searched dod.mil, defenselink.mil, Jane's Online Research, CQ Homeland Security, and ProQuest. (The last three are subscription databases available via various public and acadmic libraries.) Search strategies included:

search engine--recruitment goal OR goals site:.mil
DOD quantity recruit OR recruitment OR recruiting site:.mil
DOD military 2005 2004 2003 quantity recruit OR recruitment OR recruiting site:.mil
DOD military 2005 2004 2003 quantity recruit OR recruitment OR recruiting "force management risk" site:.mil
dod.mil site--<recruitment and statistics>
Jane's Online Research--<recruitment and statistics>,<recruitment and statistics and (army or navy or marines or "air force")>
Proquest: (military and (quantity or number*)) AND (recruit* and "united states") AND (statistic*) AND PDN(>1/1/2000) {the PDN thing means that I was looking only for articles published after January 2000)

Collected links:

A couple of articles found in ProQuest:

Army's Top Recruiter Says 2006 May Be Biggest Test Damien Cave. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: May 13, 2005. pg. A.20
Recruiting numbers bounce back for Army; [Chicago Final Edition] Associated Press. Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Jun 30, 2005. pg. 4

I'm not sure this entirely answers your question, but it's a start. Please write again for clarification or additional research.

Jenna radrefjenna at yahoo