Armed Services Find It Tougher to Enlist New Recruits : Military: Goals are not being met, and experts are puzzled. Among reasons cited are the 'baby-bust' phenomenon and a healthier economy.

By ART PINE

April 8, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

LARGO, Md. — Tom Miller tosses a sheaf of promotional brochures onto the floor of his silver-gray minivan with the seeming nonchalance of an experienced--and successful--salesman. But he is no longer very confident when he goes out to make his daily rounds.

A star of his office who was easily meeting his monthly quotas just a year ago, the 29-year-old Miller has since stretched his comfortable 45-hour workweek to 65 hours and his boss has begun riding herd on him.

“I’m feeling a lot more pressure now,” he said.

Miller is not selling insurance policies or burglar alarms. He is a recruiting sergeant for the U.S. Army, and his difficulties reflect a trend that is plaguing all the armed services these days. Despite the military’s sharply reduced manpower requirements--and the high level of prestige that the armed forces have been enjoying since the 1991 Persian Gulf War--the services are having increasing difficulty finding enough recruits to fill their needs.

Gen. Carl E. Mundy Jr., commandant of the Marine Corps, told Congress recently that his service, for the first time in recent memory, actually fell short of fulfilling its recruiting goals in fiscal 1994. “Recruiting is not going well for us,” he said with some chagrin.

Although the problem is not yet near crisis proportions, officials have uncovered some early warning signs that they say ultimately could place the military in serious straits. Pentagon surveys have shown that the proportion of 16- to 21-year-olds who are willing to consider military service has fallen from 34% in 1991 to 26% last year.

Defense Secretary William J. Perry has expressed fears that the services could end up having to lower their quality standards to fill their ranks. That, in turn, could quickly erode the readiness of the armed forces.

Just why recruiting has become more difficult is something of a puzzle. Although theories abound, Col. John C. Myers, a spokesman for the Army’s recruiting command, says the services have not done enough research yet to be able to say for sure.

“There’s something happening in the marketplace and nobody’s been able to put his finger on it,” Myers said.

Brig. Gen. Kurt B. Anderson, chief of the Air Force’s recruiting command, agrees. “My sense is, unfortunately, that there isn’t any single issue that we could attack that would turn the situation around,” he said.

Even so, recruiting strategists point to a number of possible factors.

The most obvious is the “baby bust.” With the baby boom generation heading into middle-age, the number of youngsters between age 16 and 21 is at its lowest point since 1973, when Congress created the all-volunteer army.

Meanwhile, the improving economy is giving this smaller pool of young men and women a wider choice of career opportunities than during the recent recession, and more of them are opting for college. Some potential enlistees, as a result of the recent attention to military base closings and force drawdowns, may not even realize that the services are “hiring,” recruiters worry.

But most troubling of all is a vague sense that the post-Cold War military could be developing an image problem--as perhaps irrelevant, or worse, downright dangerous. The huge Soviet threat always gave the armed forces a grand mission, but the new-style challenges in Somalia and Haiti are not quite as compelling. And even though the Persian Gulf War “re-established the military’s prestige among young Americans,” said David R. Segal, a University of Maryland sociologist who has studied the recruiting problem, it also reminded them that they risk being placed in harm’s way.”

That, in turn, has heightened pressures on recruiters, such as Staff Sgt. Miller, turning an already fast-paced job into an ordeal of 12-hour days, extended workweeks and continual tension.

A Defense Department study of recruiters in all four services showed sagging morale, with only a quarter saying that they would continue if they had a choice.

“There’s movement in all those areas” of job satisfaction “and in the wrong direction,” the Air Force’s Anderson said.

Even Staff Sgt. Eli Salahuddin, a colleague of Miller’s who has maintained a good track record, would agree. Salahuddin says the extra hours and stress have placed such strains on his family that he and his wife, Diane, have had to seek counseling.

“It had set up a wall that almost shut down our communication,” Salahuddin recalled. “Your marriage is definitely, definitely tested out here,” he said. “With hours like these . . . the quality time simply is not there.”

Like Miller, Salahuddin gets to the local recruiting station at 8:30 a.m. and launches into a day full of telephone solicitation, visits to local high schools and civic groups and “cold”--i.e., unannounced--house calls at students’ homes.

His evenings are spent meeting with recent high school graduates who work during the day and catching up on paperwork. Two or three nights a week, he goes to school functions--”to keep up my visibility.” Saturday and Sunday work is frequent.

Salahuddin has not decided whether he will ask to continue in the job beyond the end of his three-year term. But Miller has decided that when his own tour is over, he wants to go back to being a military policeman.

Although officials say the services so far have been able to avoid a repeat of the late 1980s, when recruiting pressures prompted some to falsify records and break rules, surveys show that more recruiters believe that such “improprieties” are on the rise.

Adding to the urgency about the recruiting problem is that, for all the adverse publicity, the military drawdown is now almost over and the services actually are having to increase their manpower requirements.

The four services together will be taking in some 226,400 recruits in the 1997 fiscal year, which begins a year from October--up from 191,300 in fiscal 1995 and up substantially from the height of the drawdown. And they expect recruiting to remain near those levels through the year 2001.

Lt. Col. Wayne M. White, chief of the Army’s marketing and advertising branch, says that unless the services increase the number of recruits, they will be stuck with an overly senior force--top-heavy with sergeants and short on privates and corporals.

Rear Adm. Marty Evans, head of the Navy’s recruiting command, warns that in light of the current recruiting decline, the services will be hard-pressed to maintain their high standards for personnel. “We’re holding the quality but we’re on the edge,” she said.

Already, the services have begun to press Congress to restore more money to their recruiting budget in order to get additional recruiters and to beef up advertising.

The four services combined already have added almost 600 recruiters this year to their fiscal 1994 low of 12,142. They are also poised to resume all-important television advertising.

Some changes are being plotted in their advertising strategies to reflect recent surveys showing that many youngsters are looking to do something “that they can be proud of”--to have the military be “relevant.”

The Army has prepared a new TV spot that portrays the completion of recruit training and specialty schools as a mark of accomplishment--one that both enlistees and their parents will find rewarding.

“My folks are proud of what I’ve done. I’m proud of who I am. I’m a soldier,” a newly minted private tells the camera, flanked by his beaming parents.

Lt. Col. Robert E. Wilson, the Marines’ marketing director, says the Corps is preparing a similar commercial, selling the idea that those who complete the “journey” of a Marine Corps hitch will be “changed forever”--for the better.

Even so, recruiting strategists agree that money alone will not solve everything. Segal, for example, says he believes that the Army, for one, may be forced to live with less, requiring reorganization of some of its divisions for today’s missions.

Like many in civilian firms whose jobs have become more stressful, recruiters such as Miller are gritting their teeth and plodding on. Says Army Staff Sgt. Diane A. Charles, another of Miller’s office colleagues: “I’m striving to hang in there.”