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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 in spite of a challenging and disinterested recruiting market.

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland speaks with members of the media during a panel on 2025 recruiting objectives at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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Credit: Flying Force Tech. Sgt. Jackie Sanders, DOD.
VIRIN: 241030-D-XI929-1004

While speaking at a multiservice panel on 2025 recruiting issues at the previously today, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland employment said 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 stated, the services had a 35% boost in written 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’ve gained in 2024,” Helland employment stated.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to remain very carefully optimistic about the future recruiting operations as we continue to hire in a market that has low youth tendency to serve, minimal familiarity with military chances, a competitive labor market and a decreasing eligibility amongst young people.”

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

The reasons behind that are multifold, Helland stated. Young Americans have fewer ties to good friends or employment household members who have 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 need some type of waiver to serve due to any variety of disqualifications.

To counter such difficulties, Helland stated the armed force has actually carried out a medical pilot program that allows recruits to sign up with the military without a waiver for various health conditions – offered they satisfy particular requirements. Additionally, there are service member preparation courses that prepare employees to satisfy the exhausting requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is seeking to reconnect with youth and their influencers by showing them the value of serving.

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

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Flying Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder facilitates a panel on fiscal year 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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” Youth today look for a bigger purpose in their lives and desire jobs where they have greater participation in decision-making and can develop a direct tangible effect,” she continued. “Military service uses all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service offers more than 250 occupations and that it represents among the most extremely educated companies throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland said the Defense Department is working hard to counter the narrative that joining the military is an alternative to attending college or “an alternative of last resort.”

” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans comprehend that military service is a path to higher education and career chances while protecting democracy and the freedoms we love,” Helland stated.

She included that DOD is reframing this narrative. For instance, employment the department’s Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies program will quickly introduce a project to develop familiarity with the American public about the worth of military service. Plans are also proceeding to have adult influencers promote for military service.