Marines Surpass Enlisted Recruitment Goal by 1, Officers over a Dozen in Sharp Drop from 2023

Despite the diminished numbers, the service did indeed exceed its goals, and according to Katherine Kuzminski, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank who specializes in military recruiting, the Marine Corps has the credibility to be picky with who it lets in.

"The Marine Corps benefits from tougher standards in that there might be individuals who are interested in joining the military, and they may want to join the Marine Corps, but they don't meet the Marine Corps standards," she said. "And the question of 'how much over they beat it by' is in some ways irrelevant, because they can be more selective in meeting that number."

That is coupled with a recently announced historic first-term reenlistment rate not seen in over a decade for the service; it reenlisted 114% of the first-term enlisted Marines it sought and reenlisted more than 5,700 subsequent-term Marines.

"So, I don't know that the Marine Corps competes with the other services in the way that they compete with each other," Kuzminski said. "We don't know how many people they turned away, who met the standard and who wanted to join because they were not as competitive as other candidates. Whereas the Army is not in a position to turn people away if they meet all the standards and they're willing to serve."

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