1995 Recruiting Efforts Produce Quality Force

In announcing these results, Frederick Pang praised the services and their recruiters for enlisting over 175,000 people. Pang said the services achieved the difficult tasks of shrinking their total size and still recruited quality young men and women.

"The services established tough recruiting goals and our recruiters met them, Pang said. Nearly twothirds of them are working more than 60 hours a week. We're proud of them and we're determined to ease that burden."

Pang said the military forces will continue to shrink and DoD must continue its efforts to recruit high quality personnel. He said the forces must keep bringing in people at the proper ages and allow trainees to rise through the ranks. This way the military keeps "a continuing source of experienced, capable members."

Departmentwide, 96 percent of fiscal 1995 recruits without prior military service were high school diploma graduates. Of those, 71 percent scored above average on the Armed Forces Qualification Test. Those scoring in the lowest acceptable category comprised less than 1 percent.

"Our high school graduates remained at last year's level," said Pang. "There were small decreases in the enlistees scoring in Categories IIIIA for the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, while those scoring above average increased for the Air Force." Pang said DoD watches all such changes.

DoD quality benchmarks require 90 percent of its recruits hold high school diplomas and 60 percent have above average scores on the qualification test. In fiscal 1995, Pang said recruits exceeded both marks.

New recruit demographics did not vary from fiscal 1994 statistics. Black recruits increased from 18 percent to 19 percent, while Hispanic recruits rose from 7 to 9 percent. Women recruits rose one percentage point, from 17 to 18 percent.