Thirty-Somethings Find Home in the Army

It wasn't long ago that the U.S. Army was struggling to meet its recruiting goals as the military's increasingly unpopular presence in Iraq reached its peak. Now there's a steady stream of prospective GIs flowing through military recruiters' offices - and they don't fit the traditional profile.

A growing number of older Americans - "old" being defined as 30 and over - are enlisting in the Army, eager to take advantage of the stable income and valuable benefits offered by military life in an otherwise sluggish economy, according to a Los Angeles Times report Tuesday.

At the Los Angeles Recruiting Battalion, people holding master's degrees are showing up at a place normally reserved for those with just a high school diploma.

"I've been a recruiter for four years, and I've never seen that before," Staff Sgt. A.J. Calderon told the Times. "This is definitely a good thing for the Army."

In 2006, the Army raised the recruiting age limit to 42 as it struggling to meet its quotas. It had been 35 previously.

That decision produced 1,329 more active-duty soldiers in 2007 and 1,243 in 2008 - a help but a small percentage of the 80,517 total enlistments last year.

But the bump in older recruits is growing. More than 1,800 people over 30 have signed up for the Army in the first half of the 2009 fiscal year, which began in October. That accounted for a 59 percent increase over the same period in previous year.

Michael March is one of those new recruits - a 38-year-old struggling to find a job that paid well enough to allow him to complete a computer science degree. Faced with a decision of either taking out more loans for his education, he opted for the military, which will subsidize his schooling after completing his service.

While the experience, maturity and education of these new recruits benefits the Army, there is a slight downside - the older recruits see the Army as a short-term opportunity to weather the economic downturn and set themselves up for greater prosperity after service. That's opposed to younger recruits who more often view the Army as a long-term career.