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 employment despite a challenging and disinterested recruiting market.

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland speaks with members of the media throughout a panel on financial year 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 problems at the Pentagon previously this week, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland stated that the services increased the variety 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 composed contracts, and the active parts’ delayed entry program started FY 2025 with a 10% larger pool.

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

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to remain cautiously 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 declining eligibility amongst young people.”

Helland elaborated on those challenges by describing that, employment for the very first time since the metric has been tracked, employment most youths have actually never considered the choice of serving in the military.

The factors behind that are multifold, Helland said. Young Americans have less ties to pals or relative who have served in the military. 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 military has implemented a medical pilot program that enables employees to join the armed force without a waiver for various health conditions – provided they satisfy certain requirements. Additionally, there are service member prep courses that prepare employees to satisfy the exhausting requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is looking for employment 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 never ever been a much better time for them to choose military service,” Helland stated.

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder assists in 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 create a direct tangible impact,” she continued. “Military service provides all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service offers more than 250 professions and that it represents among the most extremely informed companies throughout the world and across all pay grades, Helland said the Defense Department is working hard to counter the story that joining the military is an alternative to going to college or “an alternative of last option.”

” We are working to reframe this story so that Americans comprehend that military service is a path to higher education and career opportunities while defending democracy and the flexibilities we love,” Helland stated.

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