Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

The Defense Department’s armed services branches hired 12.5% more individuals in 2024 than in the year prior despite a tough and disinterested recruiting market.

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland speaks with members of the media during a panel on financial 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 hiring issues at the Pentagon earlier this week, employment 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, employment which ended September 30.

Additionally, she said, the services had a 35% increase in composed contracts, and the active components’ postponed entry program started FY 2025 with a 10% larger pool.

” [The Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the services will continue to build off the momentum that we have actually acquired in 2024,” Helland employment stated.

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

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

The factors behind that are multifold, Helland stated. Young Americans have fewer ties to good friends or family members who have served in the armed force. There is a declining presence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of in between the ages of 17 and 24 require some kind of waiver to serve due to any variety of disqualifications.

To counter such difficulties, Helland said the armed force has actually carried out a medical pilot program that allows employees to join the armed force without a waiver for many health conditions – supplied they fulfill certain requirements. Additionally, there are service member prep courses that prepare employees to fulfill the strenuous requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is seeking to reconnect with youth and their influencers by revealing them the value of serving.

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

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Flying Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder helps with a panel on 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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” Youth today look for a bigger function in their lives and desire tasks where they have higher involvement in decision-making and can create a direct concrete effect,” she continued. „Military service uses all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service offers more than 250 occupations which it represents one of the most extremely educated companies throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland stated the Defense Department is working hard to counter the story that signing up with the armed force is an alternative to going to college or „an alternative of last option.”

” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans comprehend that military service is a pathway to greater education and career chances while defending democracy and the freedoms we love,” .

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