Emerging Issues In USMC Recruiting: Comparing Relative Attrition Risk Among Marine Corps Recruits

As the Armed Services continue to fight the Long War, recruiting conditions are likely to remain tough. With this in mind, we examine recent trends in Marine Corps bootcamp attrition, using both year-to-date attrition and cohort attrition rates. In addition, we document which bundles of recruit characteristics observable at the time of enlistment are associated with the completion of bootcamp. We then compare the relative attrition risk of recruits given their individual characteristics. We find that the recruits who pose the lowest attrition risk: sign contracts as high school seniors, ship in June through September or October through January, are high quality (i.e., Tier I and Category I-IIIAs), and meet the weight-for-height retention standard.