Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

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

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland speaks with members of the media throughout a panel on financial year 2025 recruiting objectives at the Pentagon, employment 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 issues at the Pentagon earlier today, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland employment stated 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 written contracts, and employment the active elements’ postponed entry program began 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 have actually gotten in 2024,” Helland said.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to remain meticulously positive 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 decreasing eligibility amongst young grownups.”

Helland elaborated on those challenges by explaining that, employment for the very first time since the metric has actually been tracked, most young individuals have actually never ever considered the option of serving in the military.

The reasons behind that are multifold, Helland said. Young Americans have less ties to friends or household members who have served in the military. There is a declining 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 employment said the armed force has executed a medical pilot program that permits recruits to join the armed force without a waiver for various health conditions – offered they satisfy specific requirements. Additionally, there are service member preparation courses that prepare employees to satisfy 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 pick military service,” Helland stated.

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

Explaining that U.S. military service provides more than 250 occupations and that it represents among the most extremely educated organizations throughout the world and across all pay grades, Helland stated the Defense Department is striving to counter the narrative that joining the military is an alternative to going to college or “an alternative of last resort.”

” We are working to reframe this story so that Americans comprehend that military service is a pathway to higher education and profession opportunities while protecting democracy and the liberties we hold dear,” Helland employment stated.

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