Air Force Now Offering Up to $50,000 Enlistment Bonuses for its Most Dangerous Jobs

[Sherman A1]

The Air Force announced Monday it is offering hefty bonuses -- some up to $50,000 -- for recruits to join the ranks and ship off to training quickly as the service faces lingering recruiting shortfalls from the pandemic.

Just four months ago, the head of Air Force recruiting raised the alarm in a letter about how the spread of COVID-19 caused serious headwinds, likening the declining number of airmen joining the service to decreased revenue in a business.

"Not two years into a pandemic, and we have warning lights flashing," Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, Air Force Recruiting Service commander, wrote in a memo that leaked in January. "If we were a company, we would still be in the black, we would still be making a profit, but our profit margins and our available capital, those numbers are trending down right now."

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/04/12/air-force-now-offering-50000-enlistment-bonuses-its-most-dangerous-jobs.html

[nitpicker]

1. IMO, a combination of disqualification and unwillingness to serve

Post-Vietnam, there have been issues with youth moral and physical fitness.

Long gone (in some places) is mandatory PE. Four year olds play with tablets ((if the parents can afford them)).

And very few sub-30s would qualify in the first place to join the military.

Add being-at-home online schooling and (1) those on the lower income end might have fallen back down on the ability to pass the ASVAB (or whatever it is called these days) and (2) many lost whatever physical and moral fitness they might have had.

Add in people going back to higher education that they can semi-afford now that the local food warehouse is offering $17 an hour...

((that's about 35K a year if full-time, and getting to sleep at home))