The Origins of the Military's "Recommendation Recession"
A new survey shows that conservative veterans unhappy with the military’s recent DEI efforts and the quality of the country’s political leadership are counseling young family members not to enlist.
Veterans and the Unprecedented Recruitment Crisis
The armed forces are struggling to address an unprecedented recruitment crisis, with three of America’s four major military services failing to hit enlistment targets in 2023. The military’s recruitment problems are posing a growing threat to national security. The active-duty Army currently stands at 445,000 soldiers, 41,000 fewer than only three years ago and the smallest it has been since 1940. As Gil Barndollar and Matthew C. Mai argued in September, “America isn’t ready for another war — because it doesn’t have the troops.”
Why is the military shrinking? Most diagnoses of the recruitment crisis focus on the declining number of young people who are willing and able to serve. There’s relatively little attention paid to the fact that the military is a “family business,” with 80% of recruits coming from extended military families. In 2023, however, the Wall Street Journal (in an article entitled, “The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Veterans Don’t Want Their Families to Join”) argued that a major contributor to the recruitment crisis is that “disillusioned” former servicemembers are no longer advising their children to enlist. The military, in other words, is in danger of losing its “main pipeline for new servicemembers.”
The Wall Street Journal’s reporting presented no hard evidence that service recommendations from veterans have meaningfully declined over time. Instead, the article relied on a small number of interviews with disaffected former servicemembers to advance the claim that the recruitment crisis is being driven by increasing skepticism among veterans. According to these interviews, veterans are no longer advising their family members to join because the military has been forced to endure “20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan with no decisive victories, scandals over shoddy military housing and healthcare, poor pay for lower ranks that forces many military families to turn to food stamps, and rising rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide.” In addition, the story suggested that service recommendations are declining among liberal veterans because “some on the left see the military as a redoubt of fringe conservatism.”
Surprisingly, the Journal’s reporting made almost no mention of the complaints frequently voiced by conservative veterans, an oversight pointed out by numerous commenters on the article. Three of the most “liked” posts in the comment section, for example, highlighted frustration with the military’s leadership during the Biden administration and its perceived focus on “progressive” social issues rather than warfighting:
“I served in Vietnam. Based upon what I've seen of Obama/Biden and now Biden's 3 years, no way would I serve or recommend anyone serve in today's military. As the SC ruling showed about Harvard and Biden's follow up comments diminished the SC and illustrates how much he hates the country and has diminished the quality of the military.”
“The focus on “progressive issues”, to put it lightly, has a far greater adverse impact on recruiting and retention, especially in the South, than the buried single sentence in this long piece would indicate. So long as the folks in charge fail to admit this and adjust accordingly, the situation will fester.”
“The article misses the point of what's really going on. I served, and was proud to do it because I believed in the what this country stood for, and I was willing to stand up and defend the Constitution. I believed that the leaders and politicians that commanded the military likewise had the same values. When I hear General Milley talk about climate change and white rage being the biggest threat to our security - I have no faith in our leaders. I would steer my own son away, because what's the point of doing the bidding of this bunch of fools.”
Comments such as these are typical of those found underneath online discussions of military issues. For example, Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS), which describes itself as a group of “US military veterans and citizens concerned about the divisive racist and radical CRT/DEI ideology infiltrating the military,” has assembled a document containing over 1,000 comments (published in response to news articles, online videos, and social media messages) from “currently in or retired from the military, or from a military family.” According to STARRS, the comments provide “overwhelming evidence that the CRT/DEI/Woke agenda being pushed in the Department of Defense DOES harm morale, recruiting and retention.”
The Wall Street Journal’s reporting and the analysis from STARRS advance competing claims about the root causes of veterans’ increasing reluctance to recommend military service to young people. Appropriately adjudicating between these claims requires far more, however, than a handful of interviews or an aggregation of quotes selectively culled from Internet comment sections. Nationally representative surveys of the veteran population (preferably gathered over time) would make it far easier to assess whether (and why) veteran service recommendations have fallen over the last five years.
While the Pentagon has made no effort to systematically track the country’s veteran population on these vital questions, a new survey - the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans - does. In this post, I draw on this nationally representative sample of 2,100 former servicemembers to determine how and why service recommendations have changed over time. As I show below, the willingness of veterans to advise young people close to them to join the military has declined dramatically since 2019. In other words, the premise of both the Journal’s and STARRS’s reporting is correct.
As I also point out, however, the “recommendation recession” is not a problem that has equally afflicted all parts of the veteran community. The overall decline in veteran service recommendations is almost entirely attributable to the diminishing enthusiasm for military service found among conservative veterans, who make up roughly half of the overall veteran population. In fact, service recommendations among liberal veterans have remained relatively constant since 2011.
Why has the decline been distributed so asymmetrically across the political spectrum? The data from the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans tells an unambiguous story whose broad outlines affirm the conclusions of the STARRS report. Recent Department of Defense policy changes and dissatisfaction with the direction of the military have drastically reduced the enthusiasm conservative veterans have for recommending service to their family members. For conservative veterans, mistrust of political and military leadership and the Department of Defense’s DEI initiatives are far more important factors in not advising their family members to enlist than “pay and benefits,” the “potential for war,” or the possibility of physical, psychological or emotional harm. There’s also little evidence that the military’s performance in Iraq and Afghanistan has deterred conservative vets from recommending service.
By contrast, the 20% of veterans who identify as politically liberal are relatively happy with the direction of the military. They express high levels of support for DEI initiatives and favor further efforts to diversify the force. This satisfaction has not significantly increased their overall willingness to recommend service relative to 2011 or 2019 but they view recent Department of Defense policy changes as largely positive developments.
Much like conservative veterans, very few liberal veterans cite the military’s performance in Iraq and Afghanistan as a reason to avoid making service recommendations. Liberal veterans are, however, far more sensitive to the harms associated with military service than conservative veterans. When asked why they are unwilling to advise young people to enlist, large numbers of liberal veterans cite concerns highlighted in the Journal’s reporting - PTSD, physical injury, death, and the potential for future war.
This polarization presents a profound recruitment challenge. Based on the data from the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans, eliminating DEI would help restore the trust of conservative veterans and increase sagging recruitment recommendations. Such a move would, however, would likely disillusion many liberal veterans who support these policies. While there is potential for remedial approaches that target the shared concerns of sexual harassment, budgetary cuts, and the country’s poor treatment of veterans, most paths forward risk alienating one segment of the veteran population in service of another. One of the primary challenges for the incoming Trump administration, then, will be to restore the trust of conservative veterans by refocusing the military on warfighting and lethality while not driving away large segments of the left-leaning veteran community.
Previous Research on Adult Influencers and Military Recruitment
There are only three existing data sources that provide any insight into whether military service recommendations have changed over time. Unfortunately, the limitations of each of these data sources render them incapable of identifying the extent to which veteran service recommendations are declining and what factors might be driving such a decline.
The Department of Defense’s JAMRS Influencer Poll
The Department of Defense conducts “periodic polling of the influencer market” in order to “track attitudes, impressions and behavioral intentions as they relate to and affect military enlistment.” The most recent release from this “JAMRS Influencer" poll (July–September 2021) describes the sample of respondents as consisting of 924 “influencers,” including “233 Fathers, 258 Mothers, 221 Grandparents, 212 Other Influencers.”
Figure 1 - JAMRS “Influencer” Likelihood to Recommend Military Service
The JAMRS data shows very little movement in military service recommendations over time. As Figure 1 shows, there was no meaningful change in how willing adult “influencers” were to recommend military service between 2016 and 2021.
The JAMRS data is not particularly helpful in assessing the relationship between veteran service recommendations and the current recruitment crisis. The last release of the JAMRS results is now more than three years old, missing the worst years of the recruitment crisis. Although the publicly reported data is limited, JAMRS does not appear to ask respondents to explain the reasons why they might advise against a young person joining the military. What’s more, JAMRS does not sample the most influential “influencers”: military veterans. The JAMRS surveys, in other words, provide few useful insights into the issues that currently animate debates about the recruitment crisis.
Blue Star Families Military Family Lifestyle Survey
Since 2016, Blue Star Families (an organization founded with the goal of “empowering military families to thrive by connecting them with their civilian neighbors to create strong communities of support”), has conducted an annual “Military Family Lifestyle Survey” (MFLS) of active-duty military family members. The MFLS relies on a convenience sample of respondents obtained by distributing the survey “through Blue Star Families’ networks and partners in the military community.” As reported on the MFLS site, the survey “cannot be considered representative of the entire [active-duty military family member] population.” In 2023, the MFLS obtained responses from 7,431 active-duty military family members.
The MFLS has tracked the willingness of military family members to recommend military service over the last seven years. The questions used by the MFLS to assess this have evolved over time, focusing on a “young person close to you” between 2016 and 2020 and asking about “a young family members” in 2023.
Figure 2 – Blue Star Families MFLS Likelihood to Recommend Service
The data collected by the MFLS shows a significant decline in service recommendations over the last eight years. In 2016, the MFLS found 55% of active-duty family members would recommend service to a “young person close to you.” In 2023, the number of active-duty family members who would recommend service to “young family members” had fallen to only 32% (Figure 2).
The MFLS’s results are suggestive of growing skepticism about military service among those connected to the armed forces. Much like JAMRS, however, the MFLS is not a dedicated survey of veterans and it does not include the kinds of politically-focused questions that might help us evaluate the extent to which recent military policy and performance changes might be creating this skepticism.
Pew Research Center Survey of Veterans
The Pew Research Center has periodically conducted nationally representative surveys of the veteran population. In addition to a series of questions about political identity (e.g. partisanship, self-reported ideology), the Pew surveys ask “Would you advise a young person close to you to join the military?”
The Pew surveys are infrequent and badly outdated, with the most recent two iterations fielded in 2011 and 2019. The fact that these surveys precede the onset of the recruitment crisis, however, provides a useful baseline for measuring how enthusiastic veterans are about recommending service. If the recruitment crisis is driven, in part, by declining service recommendations from veterans, we should see clear evidence of it when comparing survey results from 2019 to survey results from today.
The 2024 Survey of Military Veterans
Fortunately, the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans, which was a large (N=2,100), nationally representative survey of veterans conducted by YouGov between August 19 and September 3, 2024, addresses the limitations of this previous research. The survey included a broad range of demographic and political identity questions that help paint a detailed picture of today’s veteran population.
Who are Today’s Military Veterans?
Before diving into the question of veteran service recommendations, it is important to point out that there are more veterans on the political right than on the political left, with 43% identifying as conservative and 52% expressing an intention to vote for Donald Trump in 2024. This makes the veteran population more right-leaning than the American public on the whole.
It is also important to point out, however, that the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans sample probably skews liberal. Consider data from the 2022 and 2023 Cooperative Election Study (CES) surveys. The CES surveys have massive, nationally representative samples (e.g. 60,000 respondents in 2022) that return huge numbers of veteran respondents (e.g. more than 6,000 former servicemembers in 2022).
Figure 3 - Self-Reported Political Ideology among Military Veterans
In both 2022 and 2023, the CES found that half of veterans were conservative (and only 17% were liberal). As Figure 3 shows, these results are slightly out of step with the estimates from the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans, which finds 43% of veterans are conservative and 24% are liberal. It is possible that 7% of the veteran population shifted from conservative to liberal (either through population replacement or attitude change) between 2023 and 2024 but it is more likely that the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans is slightly biased in a left-leaning direction.
Figure 4 - Presidential Voting Preferences among Military Veterans
The same left-leaning bias can be seen in presidential voting preferences (Figure 4). The 2024 Survey of Military Veterans was conducted in August 2024 and found that 52% of veterans intended to vote for Donald Trump in the presidential election. Data from an August 2024 Pew Research Center survey of veterans, however, found 61% of veterans were going to vote for Trump. Further, exit polls from the election found that 65% of veterans ended up voting for Trump.
All of this is to say that the results presented below probably underreport the number of conservative veterans and, in doing so, underestimate the scope of the overall recruitment problems posed by conservative dissatisfaction with the military.
Service Recommendations among America’s Veterans
As mentioned above, the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans included a number of questions related to the state of the American military. Most importantly, following in the footsteps of the MFLS and the Pew veteran surveys, respondents in the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans were asked whether they would “advise a young family member (child, niece, nephew, etc.) to join the military today?”
As Figure 5 shows, there was no movement at all in veteran service recommendations between 2011 and 2019, with approximately 80% of veterans saying they would advise service in both years. Since 2019, however, there has been a dramatic change in how veterans feel about advising young people to join the military. Specifically, the overall percentage of veterans saying they would NOT recommend military service has nearly doubled over the last five years, growing from only 20% in 2019 to 38% in 2024.
Figure 5 - Service Recommendations by Military Veterans Since 2011
The topline results, however, hide significant political variation in how veterans feel about military service. As Figure 6 shows, growing skepticism about military service is heavily concentrated among the 40%-50% of veterans who identify as politically conservative. In 2019, 88% of conservative veterans said they would advise a young person close to them to join the military and 12% said they would not. In 2024, those numbers were 53% and 47%, respectively. This steep decline stands in stark contrast to trends among liberal veterans, whose collective willingness to recommend service was 59% in 2019 and 64% in 2024.
Figure 6 - Veteran Service Recommendations by Political Ideology Since 2011
Veteran Views on Recent Military Developments
So why have conservative veterans (but not liberal veterans) become so reluctant to recommend service to their young family members? The 2024 Survey of Military Veterans helps us answer this question by measuring how veterans feel about the military’s recent policy initiatives and performance.
To be more precise, a large number of questions included in the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans make explicit reference to military controversies from the last four years. In 2017, for example, Secretary of Defense Mattis declared that lethality was the military’s overriding focus. Signaling a new approach built on the assumption that diversity is “a necessary part of warfighting and all successful military operations,” President Biden issued an executive order “embedding diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA)” efforts in “all parts of the Federal workforce,” including the military.” “Diversity officers” were summarily installed throughout the ranks, systematically replacing Colin Powell’s “color blind” philosophy with racial and gender reporting up the chain-of-command. Reflecting these new priorities, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman C.Q. Brown issued a memorandum in 2022 setting race and sex quotas as “Diversity & Inclusion goals” for commissioned officer applicants to the Air Force.
The data reveal just how polarizing these decisions have been among veterans. As Figure 7 shows, 64% of conservative veterans (but only 15% of liberal veterans) say that the military has become “less focused on warfighting and lethality” over time.
Figure 7 - Military’s Focus on Warfighting and Lethality by Ideology
In direct opposition to President Biden’s statements, 87% of conservative veterans say DEI efforts are “not essential parts of warfighting and are not necessary for achieving success in military operations” (Figure 8). By contrast, 81% of liberal veterans say that DEI efforts are essential for military success.
Figure 8 - DEI Efforts And Military Success by Ideology
Similarly, 80% of conservative veterans say that the military pays “too much” attention to increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion. Only 8% of liberal veterans said the same (Figure 9).
Figure 9 - Attention Paid to DEI by Ideology
Opposition to racial and gender preferences was also widespread among conservative veterans, with 98% saying conservative veterans “race and gender should not be a factor” in military promotion decisions (Figure 10). Liberal veterans, by contrast, were more supportive eight times more likely than conservative veterans to say “there should be racial and gender preferences.”
Figure 10 - Racial and Gender Preferences in Military Promotions by Ideology
Collectively, these views have fueled a broad pessimism about the military among conservative veterans. As Figure 11 shows, while only 25% of liberal veterans and 44% of moderate veterans say the military is headed in the wrong direction, nearly 90% of conservative veterans do.
Figure 11 - Military Headed in the Right/Wrong Direction by Ideology
Unsurprisingly, these perceptions are highly correlated with the willingness to make service recommendations. Only 51% of those who see the military headed in the “wrong direction” would advise a young family member to enlist (compared to the 78% of those who see the military headed in the “right direction.”
Impact of Recent Developments on the Likelihood of Service Recommendations
While these results are suggestive, the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans provides more direct evidence about how important DEI initiatives are relative to other, more longstanding concerns. Specifically, the survey asked two sets of questions connecting the complaints identified in the Wall Street Journal and the STARRS report to service recommendations.
First, the survey asked respondents whether seven recent developments connected to the US military have made it more or less likely that they would recommend service to a young family member. Figures 12, 13, and 14 show the net impact of each development on the likelihood of service recommendations (i.e. the percentage of respondents who said the development made them “much more” or “somewhat more” likely to recommend service minus the percentage of respondents who said the development made them “much less” or “somewhat less” likely to recommend service).
Figure 12 - Impact of Recent Developments on the Likelihood of Service Recommendations among Conservative Veterans
Figure 13 - Impact of Recent Developments on the Likelihood of Service Recommendations among Moderate Veterans
Figure 14 - Impact of Recent Developments on the Likelihood of Service Recommendations among Liberal Veterans
Figures 12-14 show the incredibly positive impact the Post-9/11 GI Bill and reduction in deployment time have had on veterans’ willingness to recommend service to their children (regardless of political ideology).
The data also show the incredibly negative impact reports of sexual assault have had on service recommendations, with large percentages of veterans across the political spectrum saying these have made them less likely to advise young people to join the military. Similarly, the possibility of budget cuts have reduced the likelihood of service recommendations from a significant number of veterans of all political stripes.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the “performance of the military in Iraq and Afghanistan” does not appear to be a net drag on service recommendations. 25% of veterans said the military’s performance in these conflicts made them less likely to recommend service but 28% said it made them more likely to recommend service.
The most striking finding to emerge from the data presented in Figures 12-14 is the polarizing nature of the military’s DEI efforts. 76% of conservative veterans said “the increasing focus on DEI” made them “somewhat” or “much” less likely to recommend service to a young person close to them (10% said it made the “somewhat” or “much” more likely to and 14% said it had “no effect”). This was the most important factor in reducing the likelihood of service recommendations among conservative veterans. Among liberal veterans, however, DEI efforts have had a net positive effect on the likelihood of service recommendations. While only 9% of liberal veterans said “the increasing focus on DEI” made them “somewhat” or “much” less likely to recommend service, 51% said it made them “somewhat” or “much” more likely to. DEI initiatives, in other words, polarize the veteran population along ideological lines when it comes to service recommendations.
Veteran Reasons for Not Advising Military Service
Second, the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans asked those who said they would not recommend service to explain the considerations that went into their decision. Specifically, respondents were asked to rate how important each item on a list of eight factors was (“a major factor,” “a minor factor” or “not a factor”) in their choice to not recommend service.
Figure 15 - Reasons for Not Advising Military Service among Conservatives
Figure 16 - Reasons for Not Advising Military Service among Moderates
As Figure 15 shows, dissatisfaction with the country’s political leadership and the military’s DEI policies were “major factors” discouraging conservative veterans from recommending service. More than 85% of conservative veterans who would not advise military service said “mistrust of political leaders” and “the military’s current DEI and other social policies” were “major factors” in their decision. Poor treatment of veterans” was also identified frequently, being mentioned as a “major factor” for not advising service by 65% of conservative veterans. The same conclusions hold among moderate veterans (Figure 16).
Contrary to the reporting of the Wall Street Journal, pay and benefits, the potential to go to war, time away from family, and the possibility of psychological problems, physical injury or death were far less important, with less than a third of conservative veterans saying each of these considerations was a “major factor” in their unwillingness to advise service.
Figure 17 - Reasons for Not Advising Military Service among Liberals
Similar to conservative veterans, nearly 60% of liberal veterans mentioned “poor treatment of veterans.” As Figure 17 also shows, much like conservative veterans, a relatively small percentage of liberal veterans say “pay and benefits” are a “major factor” for not recommending service. It does not appear, in other words, that the military’s compensation for soldiers is acting as a significant deterrent to veteran service recommendations.
Despite these similarities, there were important differences between liberal and conservative veterans on the importance of DEI and harm-based considerations. Unsurprisingly, liberal veterans were far less likely than conservative veterans (17% to 86%) to say that the military’s “DEI and social policies” were “major factors” in their unwillingness to recommend service. More surprisingly, however, liberal veterans were roughly twice as likely as conservative veterans to say the potential to go to war (66% to 31%), the possibility of psychological problems (69% to 28%), and the possibility of physical injury or death (65% to 34%) are “major factors” for not recommending service. Liberal veterans were also significantly more likely than moderate veterans to list these concerns as “major factors.” Put differently, the Wall Street Journal’s diagnosis is a much better description of what’s going on for liberal veterans than what is going on for conservative or moderate veterans.
What is to be Done?
Some observers have recently argued that “veterans are the key to solving the US military’s recruitment crisis.” While veteran service recommendations have declined significantly over the last five years (coinciding with the onset and acceleration of the military’s enlistment problems), it has not been entirely clear what can be done to reverse this decline. There simply hasn’t been enough good data to identify a path forward.
The 2024 Survey of Military Veterans provides a clear picture of the scope and causes of the “recommendation recession.” Unfortunately, as the results presented above show, there are no silver bullets that can solve this problem.
The backdrop of the decline in service recommendations among veterans is a deep mistrust of the country’s political leadership. After watching four presidents lose two wars, buffeted by polarizing policy changes from one administration to another, veterans are no longer confident that their children and grandchildren will enjoy proper leadership. Indeed, 91% of conservative veterans, 83% of moderate veterans and 63% of liberal veterans say that “distrust of political leaders” is a major factor for not advising service.
Perhaps the easiest approaches to restoring trust and reinvigorating veteran service recommendations are the ones that receive widespread support across the political spectrum. Specifically, the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans points to five things the country’s political and military leadership can do to increase the willingness of veterans to advise young people close to them to enlist.
First, efforts must be made to improve the treatment of the country’s current veteran population. The perceived poor treatment of veterans was a “major factor” why many former servicemembers (independent of political ideology) would not advise a young person close to them to join the military. In short, taking care of today’s veteran population is both a moral and strategic imperative for the military.
Second, there must be stronger advocacy for defense spending. More than 30% of liberal, conservative, and moderate veterans said that the possibility of budget cuts made them less likely to advise a young person close to them to join the military. Protecting defense spending can help address the recruitment crisis by increasing veterans’ comfort with advising service to their young family members.
Third, the military must take steps to root out sexual harassment. Half of veterans said that reports of sexual harassment in the military make them hesitant to recommend military service. These concerns come up among liberal and conservative veterans alike. If the military would like to address its service recommendation problem, it must begin by addressing its sexual harassment problem.
Finally, the military should continue to expand its benefits and adjust its deployment schedule. The Post-9/11 GI Bill and the military’s decision to increase the deployment-to-dwell ratio made veterans of all political stripes significantly more likely to recommend military service. Emphasizing these benefits and pursuing similar policies should provide a much needed boost to veteran service recommendations.
Beyond these steps, however, things become tricky. Nearly any other approach to increasing veteran service recommendations will have to begin with the recognition that the veteran population is deeply polarized and addressing the concerns of veterans from one end of the political spectrum might alienate veterans from the other end.
Most notably, the results of the 2024 Survey of Military Veterans suggest that ending DEI initiatives and explicitly promoting a more meritocratic approach centered on the prioritization of warfighting and lethality would go a long way to increasing the willingness of moderate and (especially) conservative veterans to recommend military service to their young family members. The opinions of conservative veterans should not, of course, be the only consideration when deciding the future of DEI in the military. Whether DEI initiatives increase or decrease readiness, unit cohesion and the willingness of young people to enlist must also be considered. Nevertheless, the data presented above suggest that rolling back some of the military’s recent DEI efforts will increase many veterans’ enthusiasm for recommending military service.
There’s a legitimate concern that limiting the military’s DEI efforts may drive down service recommendations from liberal veterans. As the data presented above show, many DEI efforts are popular with a majority of liberal veterans. It is also important to point out, however, that the military’s embrace of DEI over the last five years has not significantly increased service recommendations from liberal veterans. The percentage of liberal veterans who would recommend service was 59% in 2019 and 64% in 2024. It does not appear, in other words, that DEI initiatives have offset conservative losses with liberal gains.
Veteran recommendations are only one part of the recruitment crisis. While the incoming Trump administration must try to restore the military’s “main pipeline” for new recruits by boosting service recommendations among veterans, it must also be aware that a focus on veterans cannot come at the expense of the interests of young people who are not part of a military family. Whether it makes sense to eliminate DEI initiatives, for example, will have to be determined by examining the net effect of those initiatives among both veterans and potential recruits. Solving the multi-faceted recruitment crisis will almost certainly require multi-faceted and narrowly targeted solutions.