Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

The Defense Department’s armed services branches hired 12.5% more people in 2024 than in the year prior despite a difficult and indifferent recruiting market.

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland job talks to members of the media during a panel on 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, job 2024.
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Credit: Flying Force Tech. Sgt. Jackie Sanders, DOD.
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While speaking at a multiservice panel on 2025 recruiting problems at the Pentagon previously today, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland said that the services increased the variety of employees from 200,000 in FY 2023 to 225,000 in FY 2024, which ended September 30.

Additionally, she stated, the services had a 35% increase in written agreements, and job the active components’ delayed entry program began FY 2025 with a 10% bigger pool.

” [The Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the services will continue to construct off the momentum that we have actually acquired in 2024,” Helland stated.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to stay meticulously optimistic about the future recruiting operations as we continue to hire in a market that has low youth propensity to serve, limited familiarity with military chances, a competitive labor market and a decreasing eligibility amongst young people.”

Helland elaborated on those challenges by explaining that, job for job the very first time since the metric has been tracked, a lot of youths have never ever thought about the alternative of serving in the military.

The reasons behind that are multifold, Helland said. Young Americans have fewer ties to good friends or relative who have served in the military. There is a declining presence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of people in between the ages of 17 and 24 require some type of waiver to serve due to any number of disqualifications.

To counter such challenges, Helland said the military has actually executed a medical pilot program that allows recruits to sign up with the armed force without a waiver for job numerous health conditions – supplied they meet specific requirements. Additionally, there are service member preparation courses that prepare recruits to meet the exhausting requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is seeking to reconnect with youth and their influencers by showing them the worth of serving.

” The next generation of Americans to serve should understand that there has never ever been a better time for them to select military service,” Helland stated.

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder assists in a panel on fiscal year 2025 recruiting objectives at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, job 2024.
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” Youth today seek a bigger purpose in their lives and desire tasks where they have higher involvement in decision-making and can develop a direct concrete impact,” she continued. “Military service offers all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service offers more than 250 professions which it represents one of the most highly informed companies throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland said the Defense Department is striving to counter the narrative that joining the military is an alternative to participating in college or “an option of last hope.”

” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans comprehend that military service is a path to greater education and career opportunities while defending democracy and the flexibilities we love,” Helland said.

She included that DOD is reframing this narrative. For example, the department’s Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies program will soon release a campaign to build familiarity with the American public about the value of military service. Plans are also proceeding to have adult influencers promote for military service.