Military enlistments up: Are these the first stimulus jobs?

After years of struggling to reach enlistment quotas, the U.S. military is finding itself with more volunteers than it can use. In fact, April enlistments were between 100 and 164 percent of original goals.

While undoubtedly indicative of very real worries about dying in combat, the insufficient enlistments of the past few years also suggest that many potential soldiers felt that they could do better in the private arena. With unemployment low and the economy booming, a military career may have seemed a dangerous and low-paying path.