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 in spite of a challenging and employment disinterested recruiting market.

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland talks to members of the media throughout a panel on 2025 at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, employment 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 problems at the Pentagon previously this week, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland said that the services increased the variety of employees from 200,000 in FY 2023 to 225,000 in FY 2024, which ended September 30.

Additionally, she stated, the services had a 35% increase in written contracts, and the active elements’ postponed entry program began FY 2025 with a 10% larger swimming pool.

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

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to remain very carefully positive about the future recruiting operations as we continue to recruit in a market that has low youth tendency to serve, minimal familiarity with military chances, a competitive labor market and a decreasing eligibility among young people.”

Helland elaborated on those obstacles by describing that, for the first time given that the metric has been tracked, most young individuals have actually never thought about the alternative of serving in the armed force.

The reasons behind that are multifold, Helland stated. Young Americans have less ties to friends or member of the family who have actually served in the armed force. There is a declining existence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of people in between the ages of 17 and 24 require some type of waiver to serve due to any variety of disqualifications.

To counter such challenges, Helland employment said the armed force has actually executed a medical pilot program that enables recruits to join the armed force without a waiver for various health conditions – supplied they fulfill specific requirements. Additionally, employment there are service member preparation courses that prepare recruits to fulfill the difficult requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is seeking to reconnect with youth and their influencers by showing them the value of serving.

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

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 jobs where they have greater involvement in decision-making and can create a direct concrete impact,” she continued. “Military service provides all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service provides more than 250 occupations and that it represents among the most extremely informed companies throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland stated the Defense Department is striving to counter the story 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 comprehend that military service is a pathway to higher education and profession chances while safeguarding democracy and the freedoms we hold dear,” Helland said.

She added that DOD is reframing this story. For employment example, the department’s Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies program will quickly release a campaign to construct familiarity with the American public about the worth of military service. Plans are also proceeding to have adult influencers promote for military service.