Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

The Defense Department’s armed services branches recruited 12.5% more people in financial year 2024 than in the year prior regardless of a tough and indifferent recruiting market.

Katie Helland Director job of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland talks to members of the media during 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 recruiting concerns at the Pentagon previously this week, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland stated that the services increased the variety 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 agreements, and the active parts’ delayed entry program started FY 2025 with a 10% larger swimming pool.

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

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we need to stay very carefully positive about the future recruiting operations as we continue to recruit in a market that has low youth tendency to serve, limited familiarity with military chances, a competitive labor market and a declining eligibility amongst young people.”

Helland elaborated on those difficulties by explaining that, for the first time because the metric has been tracked, many youths have actually never thought about the choice of serving in the armed force.

The factors behind that are multifold, job Helland stated. Young Americans have less ties to good friends or relative who have served in the military. There is a declining presence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of people between the ages of 17 and 24 need some type of waiver to serve due to any number of disqualifications.

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

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

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

Explaining that U.S. military service uses more than 250 professions which it represents among the most highly educated companies throughout the world and across all pay grades, Helland said the Defense Department is working hard to counter the narrative that signing up with the military is an alternative to attending college or “an alternative of last option.”

” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans understand that military service is a path to greater education and profession chances while defending democracy and the flexibilities we love,” Helland said.

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