From Wednesday February 7, a new series of television spots and posts on social networks should burst onto our screens: those of the Air and Space Force (AAE), which opens this year , the recruitment season for the three armies (land, then navy). A campaign launched in a context marked by an increasingly sustained evaporation of the workforce.
In 2023, the Army is the one that has been most affected by this air gap, with a shortage of around 2,500 recruits out of a target of 16,000. But the Air Force has not not completely avoided this disenchantment. It was 200 candidates short of reaching its objective of 4,000 recruitments. Only the navy has achieved its ambitions with 4,200 hires, even if it is not immune to other side effects.
“Today, we must recognize that we have far too many departures”admitted, Friday, February 2, Air Corps General Manuel Alvarez, director of human resources of the Air and Space Force, during a High School and Student Fair held at the door from Versailles, to Paris, and where the new campaign was presented.
An obligation to “over-recruit”
This is not the first time that the Air Force finds itself confronted to an insufficiency in its recruitment, but the tension is increasing since the re-increase of defense budgets after years of contraction. Until 2017-2018, the general staff limited its ambitions to hiring 2,000 people per year, but from 2021 it increased to 3,000 per year, and since 2023, 4,000 people have been hired. the air force must recruit to fill all its positions, i.e. around 40,800 full-time equivalents.
This pressure is partly linked to the increase in personnel required by the military programming law (2024-2030), which provides for the hiring of 6,300 people, all armies combined by 2030, with steps from 700 to 1 200 job creations per year. It is also in direct correlation with an increasingly marked flight of soldiers of all ranks, the causes of which range from the level of remuneration to housing conditions, including the multiplication of operations in a context of exacerbated conflicts.
At the start of training, the Air Force is thus faced with an evaporation almost as strong as the Army: between 2019 and 2022, 27% to 29% of candidates did not complete their training. (compared to 30% to 31.5% in the army), a phenomenon which increases from year to year. In the second part of their career, aviators are then often chased out by the private sector, in particular by civil aviation, which sometimes offers salaries with which the Ministry of Defense cannot compete.
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