Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

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

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland talks to members of the media during a panel on fiscal year 2025 recruiting goals 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 concerns at the Pentagon earlier today, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland said that the services increased the variety of 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 components’ 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 construct off the momentum that we have actually gained in 2024,” Helland stated.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we need to remain very carefully optimistic about the future recruiting operations as we continue to recruit in a market that has low youth propensity to serve, limited familiarity with military opportunities, a competitive labor market and a decreasing eligibility among young people.”

Helland elaborated on those challenges by discussing that, for employment the first time given that the metric has been tracked, the majority of youths have never ever thought about the choice of serving in the armed force.

The factors behind that are multifold, Helland stated. Young Americans have less ties to good friends or member of the family who have served in the armed force. There is a declining existence 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 challenges, Helland said the armed force has carried out a medical pilot program that allows recruits to sign up with the armed force without a waiver for numerous health conditions – offered they fulfill particular requirements. Additionally, employment there are service member prep courses that prepare employees to fulfill the exhausting requirements of military service. Moreover, employment DOD is looking for to reconnect with youth and their influencers by revealing them the value of serving.

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

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Flying Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder facilitates a panel on 2025 recruiting objectives at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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” Youth today seek a larger purpose in their lives and desire jobs where they have greater involvement in decision-making and can develop a direct tangible 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 educated companies throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland said the Defense Department is striving to counter the narrative that signing up with the armed force is an alternative to participating in college or “an alternative of last resort.”

” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans understand that military service is a pathway to greater education and career opportunities while defending democracy and the liberties we love,” Helland stated.

She included that DOD is reframing this story. For example, the department’s Joint Advertising Marketing research and Studies program will quickly introduce a campaign to build familiarity with the American public about the worth of military service. Plans are likewise proceeding to have adult influencers promote for military service.