<\/a>It’s a bad economy. Job searches have not been successful. Young people are running out of options.<\/p>\n What can they do?<\/p>\n Perhaps joining the military is not a bad idea.<\/p>\n This may have been a thinking process for the youth during recession in the U.S.. In 2011, non-profit research organization National Priority Project (NPP) has published a military recruitment research for 2010<\/a>.\u00a0According to the NPP research, there was not enough data to prove a correlation between unemployment rate and recruitment rate. However, it does infer how the poor economy may drive youths to think of military as a career option.<\/p>\n According to NPP, the accession rate increased from FY2009 to FY2010, which indicates how more people wanted to join the military. By the FY2011 recruitment period, the US military already fulfilled the whole year’s recruitment demand and the half of FY2012’s recruitment goal. Comparing NPP’s analysis and the U.S. unemployment rate from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a>, the correlation between the unemployment rate and demand for youth to join the military seems to make more sense. Looking at the unemployment rate trend from the end of 2009 to the beginning of 2011, the unemployment rate fluctuate between 10% and 9%. Considering the recruitment dates starting on September-October period, the unemployed youth may have felt hopelessness on looking for jobs; consecutively, they thought of enlisting.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n As mentioned above, the recruitment goal for FY2011 overfilled the government’s demand. Consecutively, the government would want less recruits on next recruitment period. Of course, there the other factors influencing the military recruitment. For instance, 9\/11 incident inspired many young Americans<\/a> due to the rising patriotism. Yet, the recruitment goals by the year of 2005 supports correlation between unemployment rate and enlisting rate because the goal “had fallen short of its 80,000-person<\/a>” according to New York Times.<\/p>\n To meet the recruitment goal, the U.S. military needs either inspire or scare to influence the American youth so the recruitment goal is met. There is a myriad ways to influence the public, but Business Insider and New York times theorized how Marine Corps advertisements may be the economic indicator that speaks about the correlation between unemployment rate and enlisting rate.<\/p>\n Business Insider<\/a> and New York Times<\/a> suggest that the intensity of Marine recruitment advertisements can be a measure of economy. The general concept goes something like this: when people cannot find suitable jobs due to bad economy, the Marine Corps terrifies the potential recruits with intense imagery in the advertisements because the Marine Corps does not want too many recruits. Though there is no easy to measure the intensity of the advertisements due to its qualitative nature, it is certainly interesting to look at in the light of communication.<\/p>\n