The Military’s Worst-Ever Recruiting Crisis

Each U.S. military service saw a notable decline in white recruits over the past five years, according to data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, likely factoring into the military’s crippling recruiting crisis.

The Army, Navy, and Air Force missed their recruiting objectives by historically large margins in fiscal year 2023, which ended on Sept. 30, as the broader American public has grown wary of military service, according to Department of Defense statistics, officials, and experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Since 2018, however, the number of recruits from minority groups has remained steady—or, in some cases, increased—while the number of white recruits has declined, according to data on the demographics of new recruits obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The data “reveals the decline of white recruits is almost entirely responsible for the recruiting crisis,” Will Thibeau, director of the American Military Project at the Claremont Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“A smaller proportion of white Americans serve now than ever before. This is fundamental, because complimentary increases in black and Hispanic recruits have not taken place,” he added.

A Dramatic Decline in White Recruits

Other demographic groups have fluctuated over those five years, but none consistently tumbled over time like the white demographic.

In fiscal year 2018, 44,042 new recruits to the Army—or 56.4% of the total—were white, according to data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. That number collapsed to a low of 25,070—or 44% of the total—in fiscal year 2023.

Over the same time period, black Army recruits increased from 19.6% of the total in 2018 to 23.5% in 2023, and Hispanic Army recruits rose from 17.2% to 23.5%. However, the real number of recruits from the remaining non-white demographic groups also dipped from fiscal year 2018 to 2023, as the total number of new personnel the Army signed on each year fell dramatically, the data shows. None of these groups saw the same degree of decline as white recruits, however.

Military.com first reported the precipitous drop in the number of Army soldiers recruited in fiscal year 2023 from five years prior.

“What we’re seeing is a reflection of society; what we know less of is what is driving all of these things,” an Army official told Military.com. “There is no widely accepted cause.”

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