Feaver said that the biggest drivers affecting recruiting “by far” include competition from the civilian (nonmilitary) labor market, the lingering effects of COVID-19-era restrictions, the gradual decline in the number of young people who meet recruiting standards and changes in the way pharmaceuticals are administered and tracked. You would ask a kid if they ever broke a bone, had asthma, et cetera, and then the recruiter would hunt down medical records,” said Beth Asch, a senior economist who studies military recruitment and retention at the Rand Corp., a nonprofit research institute. Asch, from Rand, has studied military recruiting for nearly 40 years and said these types of recruiting challenges have happened before, and each time it’s treated like an insurmountable crisis.