Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

The Defense Department’s armed services branches recruited 12.5% more individuals in 2024 than in the year prior regardless of a difficult and disinterested recruiting market.

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland speaks to members of the media throughout a panel on 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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While speaking at a multiservice panel on 2025 hiring concerns at the Pentagon earlier this week, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland said that the services increased the number of employees from 200,000 in FY 2023 to 225,000 in FY 2024, which ended September 30.

Additionally, she said, the services had a 35% boost in written contracts, and the active parts’ 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 gained in 2024,” Helland stated.

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

Helland elaborated on those difficulties by describing that, for the very first time since the metric has actually been tracked, the of youths have never thought about the option of serving in the armed force.

The reasons behind that are multifold, Helland stated. Young Americans have less ties to buddies or relative 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 require some type of waiver to serve due to any variety of disqualifications.

To counter such obstacles, Helland stated the armed force has executed a medical pilot program that permits recruits to join the armed force without a waiver for many health conditions – supplied they meet particular requirements. Additionally, there are service member preparation courses that prepare employees to fulfill the exhausting requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is looking for to reconnect with youth and their influencers by showing them the value of serving.

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

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

Explaining that U.S. military service provides more than 250 professions and that it represents one of the most extremely informed companies throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland stated the Defense Department is working hard to counter the narrative that joining the military 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 pathway to higher education and career opportunities while protecting democracy and the flexibilities we hold dear,” Helland stated.

She added that DOD is reframing this narrative. For example, the department’s Joint Advertising Marketing research and Studies program will quickly launch a campaign to develop familiarity with the American public about the worth of military service. Plans are also continuing to have adult influencers promote for military service.