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 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 objectives 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 hiring concerns at the Pentagon previously this week, 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 said, the services had a 35% boost in composed contracts, and the active parts’ delayed entry program began FY 2025 with a 10% larger pool.

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

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to remain meticulously positive about the future recruiting operations as we continue to hire in a market that has low youth tendency to serve, limited familiarity with military opportunities, a competitive labor market and a decreasing eligibility among young grownups.”

Helland elaborated on those difficulties by discussing that, for the very first time because the metric has been tracked, the majority of young individuals have never considered the option of serving in the military.

The factors behind that are multifold, Helland said. Young Americans have fewer ties to good friends or family members who have actually served in the armed force. There is a decreasing existence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of people in between the ages of 17 and 24 require some kind of waiver to serve due to any number of disqualifications.

To counter such challenges, Helland stated the armed force has actually executed a medical pilot program that permits recruits to sign up with the military without a waiver for many health conditions – provided they fulfill particular requirements. Additionally, there are service member prep courses that prepare employees to meet the strenuous 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 should know that there has never ever been a better time for them to choose military service,” Helland said.

Panel Pentagon 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 bigger function in their lives and desire jobs where they have higher participation in decision-making and can produce a direct concrete impact,” she continued. “Military service uses all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service offers more than 250 occupations which it represents one of the most highly educated organizations throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland referall.us stated the Defense Department is striving to counter the story that signing up with the armed force is an alternative to attending college or “an option of last option.”

” We are working to reframe this story so that Americans comprehend that military service is a pathway to greater education and career chances while defending democracy and the flexibilities we love,” Helland said.

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