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 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, job Oct. 30, 2024.
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While speaking at a multiservice panel on 2025 recruiting issues at the Pentagon earlier this week, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland stated that the services increased the number of employees from 200,000 in FY 2023 to 225,000 in FY 2024, job which ended September 30.

Additionally, she said, the services had a 35% increase in written contracts, and the active components’ 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 build off the momentum that we have actually acquired in 2024,” Helland said.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we need to remain meticulously optimistic about the future recruiting operations as we continue to recruit in a market that has low youth propensity to serve, limited familiarity with military chances, a competitive labor market and a decreasing eligibility among young adults.”

Helland elaborated on those obstacles by explaining that, job for the very first time considering that the metric has actually been tracked, job a lot of youths have never considered 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 decreasing existence of veterans in our . Approximately 77% of people in between the ages of 17 and 24 require some type of waiver to serve due to any number of disqualifications.

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

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

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder helps with a panel on fiscal year 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 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 impact,” she continued. “Military service provides all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service uses more than 250 professions and job that it represents one of the most extremely informed organizations throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland stated the Defense Department is working hard to counter the narrative that signing up with the armed force is an alternative to attending college or “a choice of last option.”

” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans understand that military service is a pathway to greater education and profession chances while protecting democracy and the freedoms we hold dear,” Helland said.

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