The Coast Guard thinks it will meet its recruiting goals this year. But even if it does, it will take some time to replenish the service’s ranks. As of now, the Coast Guard faces a shortfall of several thousand personnel, and the service’s leaders have had to adjust their operations accordingly.

As of now, the Coast Guard has more than 4,000 empty billets in its military workforce — a huge number for a small service. Congress has authorized a total active duty end strength of 44,500, but according to the latest figures from the Defense Manpower Data Center, from the end of June, the active force only has 40,358 members.

The most glaring shortfall is in the most junior enlisted ranks — E-1 through E-3 — where there’s a shortfall of about 1,100 people.

Adm. Kevin Lunday, the Coast Guard’s Vice Commandant, said it’s the result of missed recruiting goals over the past four years.

“Like many organizations, we came out of COVID seeing challenges with hiring, so we’ve had to invest a significant amount of resources into recruiting and retention to be able to build back up that workforce,” he said during a session hosted by the Brookings Institution last week. “Some of the implications of that are we can’t crew all of our ships and all of our stations. We’ve had to temporarily shutter some of our small boat stations, and we will lay up three of our major cutters because we don’t have enough enlisted personnel to crew them. Those are temporary measures, and right now we are making progress on recruiting, but we still have a ways to go.”

In May, the Coast Guard announced that because of an “unprecedented workforce shortage,” it would be temporarily consolidating 23 of its small boat stations around the country, leaving some of them unstaffed or serving only as forward operating bases, and pausing operations at another six stations altogether.

Operational cutbacks won’t last forever, officials say

However, Lunday said the reason the Coast Guard is confident that the sidelining of cutters and boat stations is temporary is that the service is finally seeing strong recruiting numbers.

“In June, we achieved our [monthly] recruiting goals in the enlisted workforce for the first time since 2017. 4,400 a year is what our target is,” he said. “What that means is we’re no longer losing people — our shortage has stopped. But now we need to gain those people back.”

And recent manpower figures also show the Coast Guard is making progress: It’s added about 1,000 active duty military members to its end strength since this time a year ago. Officials say that’s partly because of added recruiting resources and changes in recruiting policy — but that standards haven’t been lowered.

Instead, like the other military services, the Coast Guard is doing more to help prospective recruits meet the existing standards, Lunday said.

“If we have a young person that’s graduating high school and they want to serve in the Coast Guard, but they don’t have the physical fitness capability, our recruiters will go with them. We have a program now where we’ll help them work out before they actually enlist,” he said. “We’re also experimenting with a program where when you show up at boot camp, we don’t throw you right into the traditional cauldron of intense training right away. We actually want to make sure that they are physically, mentally, emotionally ready for what we’re going to put them through. That way, we can increase the success rate of those that complete recruit training or the academy or Officer Candidate School or however we bring them into the service.”

More funding for Coast Guard recruiting

On the resources side, the Coast Guard could soon be getting more money for recruiting. In May, the House approved $12 million dollars in additional funding for Coast Guard Recruiting Command to pay for more personnel and offices, and another $9 million plus-up for other recruiting efforts.

In the meantime, Adm. Linda Fagan, the Coast Guard commandant, told lawmakers late last month that the service has been trying to redirect existing funding to bolster recruiting.

“The good news story is this is not a retention issue. And we have increased our resourcing to fund 15 additional recruiters. We’ve also taken folks that were previously qualified as recruiters and redirected them back into recruiting work, which has a sense of urgency around it,” she told the House Homeland Security Committee. “Now we need to begin to draw that talent, and we’re fielding mobile applications and looking for every opportunity to speed the process from initial contact to actual arrival at Cape May. As we work through the medical and physical readiness standpoint, we find once people understand who we are and they have a propensity to serve, they are very enthusiastic about the opportunity to join and stay in the service. We’re using all aspects of the organization to get after the recruitment challenge.”

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