Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

The Defense Department’s armed services branches recruited 12.5% more individuals in fiscal year 2024 than in the year prior despite a tough and employment indifferent recruiting market.

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

Additionally, she said, the services had a 35% increase in composed agreements, and the active parts’ delayed entry program began FY 2025 with a 10% bigger swimming pool.

” [The Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the services will continue to build off the momentum that we’ve acquired in 2024,” Helland said.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we need to remain meticulously optimistic about the future recruiting operations as we continue to hire in a market that has low youth tendency to serve, minimal familiarity with military opportunities, a competitive labor market and a decreasing eligibility among young adults.”

Helland elaborated on those difficulties by explaining that, for employment the very first time because the metric has actually been tracked, most youths have actually never ever considered the option of serving in the military.

The factors behind that are multifold, Helland employment said. Young Americans have fewer ties to buddies or household members who have served in the armed force. There is a declining existence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of individuals in between the ages of 17 and 24 require some type of waiver to serve due to any variety of disqualifications.

To counter such challenges, Helland stated the military has actually executed a medical pilot program that enables employees to sign up with the armed force without a waiver for various health conditions – offered they satisfy specific requirements. Additionally, there are service member prep courses that prepare recruits to satisfy the difficult requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is seeking to reconnect with youth and their by revealing them the value of serving.

” The next generation of Americans to serve need to know that there has actually never ever been a better time for them to pick military service,” Helland said.

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder assists in a panel on financial year 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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” Youth today look for a bigger purpose in their lives and desire jobs where they have higher participation in decision-making and can produce a direct tangible impact,” she continued. “Military service uses all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service offers more than 250 occupations which it represents among the most highly educated companies throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland stated the Defense Department is working hard to counter the narrative that signing up with the military is an alternative to attending college or “an alternative of last resort.”

” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans comprehend that military service is a pathway to higher education and profession opportunities while defending democracy and the liberties we love,” Helland employment said.

She added that DOD is reframing this story. For instance, employment the department’s Joint Advertising Marketing research and Studies program will soon introduce a campaign to construct familiarity with the American public about the worth of military service. Plans are also continuing to have adult influencers promote for military service.