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Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

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

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland talks to members of the media during a panel on 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 problems at the Pentagon earlier this week, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland said that the services increased the variety of recruits from 200,000 in FY 2023 to 225,000 in FY 2024, employment which ended September 30.

Additionally, she stated, employment the services had a 35% boost in written contracts, and the active parts’ postponed entry program started FY 2025 with a 10% larger swimming pool.

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

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

Helland elaborated on those challenges by explaining that, for the first time since the metric has been tracked, a lot of young people have never ever considered the option of serving in the military.

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

To counter such obstacles, Helland stated the armed force has actually implemented a medical pilot program that enables recruits to sign up with the military without a waiver for numerous health conditions – offered they satisfy certain requirements. Additionally, there are service member preparation courses that prepare employees to satisfy the difficult requirements of military service. Moreover, employment DOD is seeking to reconnect with youth and their influencers by showing them the worth of serving.

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

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Flying Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder facilitates a panel on 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 tasks where they have higher 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 uses more than 250 professions and that it represents one of the most highly educated organizations throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland said the Defense Department is striving to counter the narrative that joining the armed force is an alternative to going to college or “an option of last hope.”

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

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