Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

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

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland talks to members of the media throughout a panel on 2025 recruiting objectives at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 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 issues at the Pentagon previously this week, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland employment said that the services increased the number of recruits from 200,000 in FY 2023 to 225,000 in FY 2024, employment which ended September 30.

Additionally, she said, the services had a 35% boost in written contracts, and the active elements’ postponed entry program started 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 gotten in 2024,” Helland stated.

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

Helland elaborated on those difficulties by describing that, for the very first time because the metric has been tracked, most youths have never considered the choice of serving in the armed force.

The reasons behind that are multifold, Helland said. Young Americans have less ties to friends or member of the family who have served in the armed force. There is a declining presence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of individuals between the ages of 17 and 24 need some type of waiver to serve due to any variety of disqualifications.

To counter such difficulties, Helland said the armed force has actually executed a medical pilot program that enables employees to join the military without a waiver for many health conditions – supplied they meet certain requirements. Additionally, there are service member preparation courses that prepare recruits to meet the difficult requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is seeking to reconnect with youth and employment their influencers by revealing them the worth of .

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

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Flying Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder facilitates 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 greater 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 occupations and that it represents among the most highly educated organizations throughout the world and employment throughout all pay grades, Helland stated the Defense Department is striving to counter the narrative that joining the armed force is an alternative to participating in college or “an option of last resort.”

” We are working to reframe this story so that Americans understand that military service is a path to greater education and career chances while safeguarding democracy and the freedoms we love,” Helland said.

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