Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

With the demographic change taking place all over European societies, the number of young people entering the labor market will decline. As a result, European Defense organizations will likely face severe recruitment and retention problems and find themselves in ever more direct competition with the private sector to attract the best candidates. To offset the shrinking base of recruitment, they will have to become more attractive to potential recruits and to increase the number of candidates in previously under-represented segments (for example, women and ethnic-cultural minorities). The paper presents selected results from an online survey carried out between Spring 2015 and Spring 2016 in five countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland) among samples of young people. The paper presents how young people from these countries in general, view their armed forces, what their job expectations are, and what they think the armed forces can offer them. The multinational survey on which the analyses were based is part of a collaborative project conducted within the framework of the European Defense Agency on the impact of demographic change on the recruitment and retention of personnel in European armed forces.