High unemployment, which just hit a 26-year-high of 9.8 percent, helped recruiting as well as a multi-billion dollar effort to attract volunteers to serve in uniform, officials said.

"We're pleased to report that, for the first time since the advent of the all-volunteer force, all of the military components, active and reserve, met their number as well as their quality goals," Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary for defense for military personnel policy, told reporters.

Carr said the country's worst economic recession since the 1930s "was a force" in the recruiting results for fiscal year 2009, though not the only factor.

The recruiting success comes at a time when the military is stretched fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with some soldiers serving in four or five successive combat tours.

A total of about 189,000 troops are currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The faltering economic outlook meant the Pentagon planned to cut its recruitment budget by 11 percent in fiscal 2010, from a base of about five billion dollars, said Curtis Gilroy, director of accession policy.

A 10 percent increase in the national unemployment rate generally translates into a four to six percent "improvement in high-quality Army enlistments," Gilroy said.

The US Army -- which carries the biggest burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- recruited 70,045 volunteers, exceeding its goal of 65,000 recruits, according to the Pentagon.

The US Navy had 35,527 recruits, meeting its goal of 35,500 while the US Marine Corps had 31,413 volunteers sign up, hitting its goal of 31,400. The US Air Force recruited 31,983, with a goal of 31,980.

The number of waivers granted to recruits who fail to meet medical criteria or who have committed crimes or "major misconduct" had declined in 2009 though final numbers were not in yet, Carr said.

"It will be less, and it will be significantly less. But I can't say how much less until we get the actual data," he said.

Waivers for misconduct for army recruits were down 37 percent, Army General Donald Campbell told the same news conference.

"I think what we're seeing is a good trend in the Army that we're able to continue to recruit quality young men and women," Campbell said.

Under pressure to bolster manpower, the military had come under criticism in recent years for accepting recruits with criminal records or lower levels of education.

But officials said more recruits had higher levels of education in 2009.

Of Army recruits, 94.7 percent were high school graduates compared to about 83 percent in 2008, Campbell said.

For all the armed services, 96 percent had graduated from high school, exceeding the military's goal of 90 percent and surpassing the country's overall average of 75 percent.

Recruiting numbers showed more young Americans from the South tend to join the military than other regions, while relatively fewer people sign up from the Northeast, part of a long-running trend, Carr said.

"We find now, as we've found in years past, that the military is more likely to draw better from the South and less well from the Northeast," he said.

The number of active duty members of all the US armed services come to about 1.4 million, not including about 880,000 "selected" reserves ready to be called up.

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Related Links
The Military Industrial Complex at SpaceWar.com
Learn about the Superpowers of the 21st Century at SpaceWar.com

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News