Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

The Defense Department’s armed services branches hired 12.5% more individuals in fiscal year 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 throughout a panel on financial year 2025 recruiting goals 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 hiring concerns at the Pentagon earlier today, 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 written contracts, and the active components’ postponed entry program started FY 2025 with a 10% bigger pool.

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

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

Helland elaborated on those difficulties by explaining that, for the first time given that the metric has been tracked, a lot of youths have never ever thought about the alternative of serving in the military.

The factors behind that are multifold, Helland stated. Young Americans have fewer ties to friends or relative who have actually served in the armed force. There is a decreasing existence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of individuals in between the ages of 17 and 24 require some kind of waiver to serve due to any number of disqualifications.

To counter such challenges, Helland said the military has executed a medical pilot program that permits recruits to sign up with the armed force without a waiver for various health conditions – provided they satisfy particular requirements. Additionally, there are service member prep courses that prepare employees to meet the laborious requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is seeking to reconnect with youth and their influencers by revealing them the worth of serving.

” The next generation of Americans to serve need to understand that there has never been a better time for them to pick military service,” Helland said.

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder helps with a panel on financial year 2025 recruiting objectives at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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” Youth today look for a larger purpose in their lives and desire jobs where they have greater 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 which it represents among the most highly informed companies throughout the world and across all pay grades, referall.us Helland stated the Defense Department is working hard to counter the story that signing up with the armed force is an alternative to attending college or „an alternative of last hope.”

” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans comprehend that military service is a pathway to higher education and career opportunities while protecting democracy and the flexibilities we hold dear,” Helland said.

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