DoD: 75% of Americans aged 17 - 24 are unfit for service

From Fortune magazine, an excerpt of a recent article regarding prospective young employees and the state of U.S. workers.
Unemployment for ages 16 - 19 is a staggering 25%. The harsh reality is that even when jobs are available,
many of these job applicants aren't ready for them. They aren't getting hired because they often aren't worth hiring.

In addition, the military doesn't want them either...

An alarming view of prospective young employees comes from the Defense Department,
which has found that 75% of Americans aged 17 to 24 are not qualified to serve in the armed forces.
There are three main reasons.

First is inadequate education. About one-quarter of the cohort haven't graduated from high school,
and about 30% of the high school graduates who take the Armed Forces Qualification Test, a test of basic reading and math skills, fail it.

Second is criminality. About 10% of the group has been convicted of a felony or serious misdemeanor at least once.

Third is physical unfitness. About one-quarter of the cohort is too overweight to join the military.
Others have drug or alcohol problems, asthma, sight or hearing problems, or mental health issues,
or they've recently undergone treatment for ADHD. Combine those issues, and over half of young adults
can't join the military because of health problems. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that the
health of 18-to-29-year-olds hasn't improved in years and, by some measures,
is deteriorating; smoking, drinking, and inactivity remain prevalent.

full article here: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2...nt-the-facts-wed-rather-not-face/?iid=SF_F_LN

 

And how many were in the past?

I mean I doubt the figures were different in the past, standards must be a lot higher.

 

Do you remember JFK? President's Council, on Physical Fitness and nutrition.. circa 1961?

 

To be honest, the military adjusts recruitment standards as needed. They're trying to shrink the military right now, which is why recruitment standards have changed. They do this by offering or not offering waivers for particular medical conditions or past misconduct.

If the military really needed people in a hurry, they'd start granting a lot more waivers for drug-related crimes and letting fat people into a program to cut the weight in a hurry before shipping them off to basic training.

 

Exactly right. The standards get adjusted as the need for manpower fluctuates. Just four years ago, the Army was taking kids who did not have a high school diploma to fill out the ranks. As the froce shrinks, the standards will go up.

The standards also get higher just to stay in once you're already qualified, as well. Tighter physical fitness testing, tighter requirements for academics and tighter requirements on annual physicals are all part of reducing the force. Sooner or later, it will come to simply tossing folks they don't want out the door, just as they did in the 1990s with the 'peace dividend' after the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War.

And, in three or four more years, you will see the military offering bonuses to keep company-grade officers and mid-level NCOs once the leadership realizes they screwed up again and got rid of too many people, just like they did in the late 1990s. All part of the game.

 

Yes, but they can only be changed so much. And some things can't be waived, no matter what.

Any arrest for drug or sexual crimes almost automatically disqualifies a potential candidate. And conviction for those 100% disqualifies them.

Weight is another that can't be waived. They allow recruits to enter that are within a few percentage points of the requirements, but no more. And if they do not loose the excess weight by the time they graduate their schools, they are likely to be discharged.

And most physical conditions that disqualify a person are permanent disqualifications. The only exception are some which are considered to be short-term, like limb and joint injuries, pregnancy, and the like.

I know I had many talks with recruiters about this over the years. And most of them tell me the same thing. The 2 major disqualifications tend to be drug use, and the failure to pass the ASVAB.

And the issue is still not waivers. If a recruiter gets in an awesome candidate with a high ASVAB score and the ability to get a Secret security clearance, they can get them waivers without to much problem.

However, if the candidate has a barely passing ASVAB score, a minor criminal record and horrible credit, they are not likely to even try and get the waivers. Because they know that somebody else will walk in the door in the next few days that can do the same thing without the need for a waiver.

And I know a bit about how this can be, because I tried for 3 years to get a waiver to join the National Guard. I had my diploma, top percentile ASVAB scores, and good references. However, I needed a waiver for a knee injury. After 3 years, I finally gave up and went to the Army recruiter, where I shipped off for training 2 weeks later.

The difference was not the waiver, but the proccess to get the waiver.

 

From what I understand, there is very little that absolutely cannot be waived. Just because they don't offer waivers right now doesn't mean they won't offer them later if they need to boost recruitment.

Because the military is trying to shrink right now. They could just as easily offer waivers for it if they needed to boost recruitment. The military's propensity to issue wavers changes depending on need.

What's the saying? Where there's a will, there's a waiver.

Currently, yes. If the US military had a dire need for more soldiers, that would change. Right now they're trying to cut people, so they're not likely to make special dispensation for problems.

 

Twas ever thus. Kitchener's Army in World War One used to sing:

'We are Fred Karno's Army,
The rag-time Infantry -
We cannot read, we cannot write
So what bloody use are we?
And when we get to Be-erlin.
The Kaiser he will sa-ay,
"Ach, ach mein Gott,
What a silly bloody lot,
Are the rag-time Infantry"'.

Well, they got to Berlin anyway, though the Kaiser didn't stay to comment - and not all that long before, during the Boer War, vast numbers of volunteers turned out to be physically inadequate, helping the rise of the Labour Party (I'm sure Americans won't go in for that sort of thing!). The point is, when there is high unemployment, the forces can be choosy - but no doubt they'll train the chaps to be up to dying soon enough!

 

No, some things can not be waived, period, ever. Drug and sex crimes are among them. Have one of those, and you will never get in the military short of identity theft.

And they did not even accept waivers for those kinds of crimes during the shortest enlistment year in recent record, 2007. Common waivers were easy to get, but when you moved from basic physical waivers and dependent waivers, it got harder and harder.

A waiver for a petty theft conviction was fairly easy, but when you got much beyond that, their availability got harder and harder.

So whoever told you what you understood was very wrong.

 

The military has changed vastly since the early 20th century.

 

Some parts have, that much is true. As was pointed out above, though, they can afford to be picky right now becuase the economy is so bad and the wars are winding down. As the economy improves, I imagine you'll see a loosening of requirements.

As for the waivers, there are a lot of things the military will waiver should they feel the need to do so. Right now, I believe any sort of waiver just to get into the military would be rather difficult.

 

Well, everything has, but the need to get people to die for very dubious reasons seems much the same, surely - and the complaint that the mass of people aren't even up to being killed to order?

 

I was wondering about the morality that rules that a conviction for drug possession makes you unfit to go and kill brown foreigners.

 

LOL...75%...

Hey T-Baggers...better insist on those education cuts!

 

it also makes you unfit to kill black, yellow, white and red foreigners.

 

how many of those overlap? i'm sure there's more than a few chubby drug dealers that can't read.

 

That's what the military is? "Killed to order" drones?

 

Depends on the rank, surely? The drones don't get killed. obviously.

 

Killing the other guy without him killing you back is the whole point in any case, so what are you trying to say?

 

you're confusing your drones.

<---this one.

not this one --->

 

Mikezila - Am I confusing my drones? The original statement seemed to be concerned with the kinds I meant, but I'm content to be wrong. Can flying drones (other than ants and bees I mean) be 'killed'?

The whole aim, not the whole point! As the various colonial forces in the Middle East are finding, it would be nice if it were so, but it ain't: soldiers are paid to be ready to die, and they do, particularly when sent in without any clear plan - another parallel between the Somme and Afghanistan, by the way. 'Lions led by donkeys', was what the German High Command said, and I expect the Taliban have similar thoughts about their opponents.

 

You could say the same about Policemen and Firefighters.

 

Yes - I do.

 

You say 'potato,' I say 'tater.' Different word, same thing. So long as we're killing them there, we're not killing them here. Good enough for me.

 

You say 'freedom', I say 'madmen'. Get a life and give up this obsession with killing.