As I understand it, with combination of the Great Recession and the winding down of Afghanistan/Iraq, recruiting became much easier and so the need for gimmicks

As I understand it, with combination of the Great Recession and the winding down of Afghanistan/Iraq, recruiting became much easier and so the need for gimmicks like moral waivers or tweaking test scores disappeared and recruiters could afford to try to get a better grade of recruit. I imagine that something similar took place with all of the people who did get recruited beforehand: commanders took opportunities to get rid of those who hadn't excelled or simply not encourage them to re-enlist etc, and natural attrition takes care of it all.