The all-volunteer force may finally have reached its breaking point. During the first years of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many military
warontherocks.com
"Why is this happening now? Part of it, no doubt, is that the end of the war in Afghanistan makes military service seem less compelling. For the first time in almost 20 years, American troops are no longer fighting abroad to keep insurgents and terrorists at bay. Unemployment is
low, which always makes it harder to recruit — and the
tight labor market has also forced many companies to increase wages and offer compelling incentives to attract the best talent. But two other sets of factors are interacting in complex ways that make it almost impossible to determine which are having the greatest effect.
First, the number of young people who are eligible to serve in the military dropped precipitously last year — from an already low figure of
29 percent to a shocking 23 percent — largely due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Levels of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions exploded among
young Americans (and many
not-so-young Americans), who faced sometimes extreme levels of social isolation. School closures and remote instruction have caused
test scores to decline dramatically throughout the country (
and the world), and scores on the ASVAB, the military’s standardized test for potential recruits, declined by as much as
9 percent."
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