An Analysis of the Marine Corps Enlistment Bonus Program

The Marine Corps has been very successful at meeting its yearly recruiting goal. However, the Marine Corps does struggle to recruit the correct number of applicants into each enlistment program. Enlistment bonuses are used to attract highly qualified applicants into critically short enlistment programs and the enlistment bonus budget has increased significantly in the past 3 years. The Marine Corps has the ability to determine what enlistment programs are considered difficult to fill and the capability to increase the number of allocations and the dollar amount of enlistment bonuses. However, the Marine Corps does not have the ability to determine the optimal dollar amount for an enlistment bonus. This research begins by analyzing methods used in previous studies to estimate the optimal enlistment incentive. This research found that choice-based surveys administered to recruits could be used to determine optimal enlistment incentives. Then the study analyzed eight years of recruiting data obtained from the Total Force Data Warehouse and the Marine Corps Recruiting Command. Results show that the enlistment bonus program FEP was unchanged for several years and other factors identified could be decreasing the effectiveness of the FEP. With the information provided by this thesis, the Marine Corps can increase the effectiveness of the FEP.