Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

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

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland speaks with 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 concerns at the Pentagon previously this week, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland stated that the services increased the number 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 contracts, and the active components’ delayed entry program started FY 2025 with a 10% bigger pool.

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

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to stay very carefully positive about the future recruiting operations as we continue to hire in a market that has low youth tendency to serve, restricted familiarity with military opportunities, a competitive labor market and a declining eligibility among young people.”

Helland elaborated on those difficulties by describing that, for the first time considering that the metric has been tracked, a lot of young people have never thought about the option of serving in the military.

The reasons behind that are multifold, Helland stated. Young Americans have less ties to friends or family members who have served in the military. There is a decreasing presence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of in between the ages of 17 and 24 need some type of waiver to serve due to any number of disqualifications.

To counter such difficulties, Helland said the military has actually carried out a medical pilot program that enables employees to join the armed force without a waiver for numerous health conditions – provided they satisfy specific requirements. Additionally, there are service member prep courses that prepare employees to satisfy the laborious requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is looking for to reconnect with youth and their influencers by showing them the worth of serving.

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

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder helps with a panel on 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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” Youth today seek a larger function in their lives and desire jobs where they have higher involvement in decision-making and can create a direct concrete effect,” she continued. “Military service provides all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service offers more than 250 professions which it represents among the most extremely informed organizations throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland stated the Defense Department is striving to counter the story that signing up with the military is an alternative to going to college or “a choice of last option.”

” We are working to reframe this story so that Americans comprehend that military service is a pathway to higher education and profession opportunities while safeguarding democracy and the flexibilities we hold dear,” Helland stated.

She added that DOD is reframing this story. For referall.us instance, the department’s Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies program will soon introduce a campaign to build familiarity with the American public about the worth of military service. Plans are also proceeding to have adult influencers advocate for military service.