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 indifferent recruiting market.

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland speaks with members of the media during a panel on fiscal 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 issues at the Pentagon previously today, Director job 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 stated, the services had a 35% boost in written contracts, and job 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’ve gained in 2024,” Helland stated.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, ”we need to stay cautiously optimistic about the future recruiting operations as we continue to hire in a market that has low youth tendency to serve, restricted familiarity with military opportunities, a competitive labor market and a declining eligibility amongst young grownups.”

Helland elaborated on those challenges by describing that, for the first time because the metric has been tracked, many young people have actually never ever considered the option of serving in the military.

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

To counter such obstacles, Helland said the military has actually implemented a medical pilot program that enables employees to join the military without a waiver for many health conditions – supplied they fulfill certain requirements. Additionally, there are service member preparation courses that prepare recruits to meet the exhausting 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 need to understand that there has actually never been a better time for them to pick military service,” Helland said.

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder assists in a panel on fiscal year 2025 recruiting objectives at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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” Youth today look for a bigger function in their lives and desire jobs where they have higher involvement in decision-making and can produce a direct concrete effect,” she continued. ”Military service uses all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service uses more than 250 occupations and that it represents one of the most extremely informed organizations throughout the world and across all pay grades, Helland job said the Defense Department is striving to counter the story that signing up with the military is an alternative to participating in college or ”an option of last hope.”

” We are working to reframe this story so that Americans understand that military service is a path to higher education and profession opportunities while protecting democracy and the liberties we love,” Helland said.

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