Apr. 11—Facing turbulence in its mission to recruit young people, the Air Force is offering an array of sign-up bonuses to try to attract enough of them to fill critical specialties.
Besides dangling $3,000 to $50,000 to entice recruits to enter 15 career fields, it will give any active-duty recruit who can fill a basic training vacancy by arriving in San Antonio within five days an $8,000 "quick-ship" bonus.
After an announcement last week by the Navy — facing a stormy recruiting season of its own — of $25,000 bonuses to all who join the active-duty force between now and June, the Air Force made the extra money available starting Monday.
The offer will be good through Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year, according to the Air Force Recruiting Service, headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph.
"As we roll up our sleeves in the battle for talent, we've got to remain competitive as we go after our next generation of airmen," Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, who commands the recruiting service, said in a prepared statement. "While we've got an unmatched value proposition, we also have a record-high level of competition for America's best and brightest."
It's a tougher time than most for military recruiters, whose ability to meet young adults at high schools is still hampered by lingering pandemic restrictions. The coronavirus was a huge obstacle, posing profound challenges to the way Air Force recruiters had done their jobs for decades.
But today the U.S. economy's good job market is the major challenge. The Air Force's "qualified-and-waiting" list is about half of what has been typical for this time of year.
"Not two years into a pandemic, and we have warning lights flashing," Thomas wrote in an email several months ago. "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."
He made similar comments at a ceremony last month honoring his command's "Blue Suit" award recipients, chosen for their leadership and recruiting numbers. He told those in the audience that 2022 has been the toughest year since 1999, the last time the recruiting service couldn't meet its goals.
"The battle for talent is fierce right now, whether it's Google, Amazon, Target, you name whatever enterprise, people are looking for talent and you are engaged in not only that battle for talent — in the short term every day — but you're engaged in that battle for national defense," Thomas said.
In his statement Monday, he described those who might sign up for the bonuses as "the lifeblood of combat readiness and national security" and that the service had to "do everything we can to inspire, engage and recruit" them.
The Air Force has 1,900-plus recruiters in 1,200 offices in the United States and abroad, and so far they have been on track to make their fiscal year 2022 goal. The command aims to sign up 27,452 active-duty airmen, 9,199 in the Air National Guard and 8,200 in the Air Force Reserve.
The recruiting service's latest changes will see money funneled into seven career fields: refuel/bomber aircraft maintenance, aerospace ground equipment, munitions systems, aircraft armament systems, radio frequency transmission systems, and mechanical or electrical aptitude areas.
The bonuses vary according to how long recruits will stay in the Air Force. Someone in Air Force specialty code 2A534 — bomber aircraft maintenance — would get $6,000 if they sign a six-year contract or $3,000 for a four-year deal. That's also true of recruits who qualify for bonuses in the other six specialty codes, called AFSCs.
There also are eight other career fields where bonuses already were offered. They include airborne linguist, with a maximum $20,000 bonus. Recruits who want to become explosive ordnance experts can get a $50,000 bonus.
There are more than 130 Air Force career fields.
"We feel these bonuses will incentivize applicants to select hard-to-fill AFSCs/challenging jobs," the recruiting service's chief spokeswoman, Leslie Brown, said in an email. "The quick-shipper bonus is meant to incentivize individuals to consider shipping to (basic training) within five days, filling those normally unfilled (training slots) due to a cancellation."
Some Air Force cyber fields offer bonuses based on the recruit's highest level of certification, giving them the chance to receive up to $20,000. The service also already had offered active-duty recruits in special warfare bonuses as high as $50,000.
The Air Force's chief of staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., told the San Antonio Express-News last weekend that "when I go on travel and talk to airmen, I go, 'Is this the career field you wanted or is this the career field you got?'
"And if you're looking for a particular career field, you may have to incentivize with a bonus in order to get them into that career field," he said.
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