White people joining the Army has declined by nearly 50 percent over the last five years, hitting a record low in 2023.
The Army missed its target of 65,000 new soldiers by about 10,000 recruits last year.
Military.com reports:A total of 44,042 new Army recruits were categorized by the service as white in 2018, but that number has fallen consistently each year to a low of 25,070 in 2023, with a 6% dip from 2022 to 2023 being the most significant drop. No other demographic group has seen such a precipitous decline, though there have been ups and downs from year to year.
In 2018, 56.4% of new recruits were categorized as white. In 2023, that number had fallen to 44%. During that same five-year period, Black recruits have gone from 20% to 24% of the pool, and Hispanic recruits have risen from 17% to 24%, with both groups seeing largely flat recruiting totals but increasing as a percentage of incoming soldiers as white recruiting has fallen.
The rate at which white recruitment has fallen far outpaces nationwide demographic shifts, data experts and Army officials interviewed by Military.com noted. They don't see a single cause to the recruiting problem, but pointed to a confluence of issues for Army recruiting, including partisan scrutiny of the service, a growing obesity epidemic and an underfunded public education system.
According to the report, several service officials told the outlet that Army planners are "alarmed" by the trend, but feel as though they are stuck between a rock and hard place while trying to push for a diverse military.
The data provided to Military.com did not show if the decline is more prominent with white men or women.
White people are not the only ones sitting it out, recruits among black and Hispanic populations are also stagnant — though they are not sharply declining.
An Army official who spoke to the outlet blamed conservatives, at least in part, for mocking the military for going "woke."
"No, the young applicants don't care about this stuff. But the older people in their life do who have a lot of influence ... parents, coaches, pastors," the unnamed official told Military.com. "There's a level of prestige in parts of conservative America with service that has degraded. Now, you can say you don't want to join, for whatever reason, or bad-mouth the service without any cultural guilt associated for the first time in those areas."
