Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

The Defense Department’s armed services branches hired 12.5% more individuals in fiscal year 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 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 concerns at the Pentagon previously today, Director 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, job the services had a 35% boost in written contracts, 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’ve gotten in 2024,” Helland said.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to stay 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 declining eligibility amongst young grownups.”

Helland elaborated on those obstacles by discussing that, for the very first time since the metric has been tracked, many youths have never ever considered the choice of serving in the military.

The factors behind that are multifold, Helland said. Young Americans have fewer ties to pals or relative who have actually served in the armed force. There is a declining existence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of in between the ages of 17 and 24 need some kind of waiver to serve due to any variety of disqualifications.

To counter such challenges, Helland said the armed force has executed a medical pilot program that permits recruits to join the armed force without a waiver for numerous health conditions – supplied they satisfy certain requirements. Additionally, there are service member preparation courses that prepare employees to meet the exhausting requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is looking for 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 ever been a much better time for them to select military service,” Helland stated.

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder helps with a panel on 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, job 2024.
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” Youth today seek a larger function in their lives and desire jobs where they have greater involvement in decision-making and can produce a direct tangible effect,” she continued. “Military service uses all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service offers more than 250 professions and that it represents one of the most highly informed companies throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, job 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 “a choice of last hope.”

” We are working to reframe this story so that Americans understand that military service is a pathway to greater education and career opportunities while safeguarding democracy and the flexibilities we love,” Helland stated.

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