Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges
The Defense Department’s armed services branches recruited 12.5% more individuals in 2024 than in the year prior despite 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, 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 problems at the Pentagon earlier today, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland stated 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% boost in written agreements, and the active components’ postponed entry program began FY 2025 with a 10% bigger pool.
” [The Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the services will continue to construct off the momentum that we have actually gotten in 2024,” Helland said.
” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we need to remain meticulously optimistic about the future recruiting operations as we continue to hire in a market that has low youth propensity to serve, limited familiarity with military opportunities, a competitive labor market and a decreasing eligibility amongst young people.”
Helland elaborated on those challenges by discussing that, for the very first time because the metric has actually been tracked, the majority of youths have actually never thought about the alternative of serving in the military.
The factors behind that are multifold, Helland stated. Young Americans have less ties to pals or relative who have served in the military. There is a decreasing existence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of individuals in between the ages of 17 and 24 require some type of waiver to serve due to any number of disqualifications.
To counter such obstacles, Helland stated the armed force has implemented a medical pilot program that allows employees to join the military without a waiver for many health conditions – supplied they satisfy particular requirements. Additionally, there are service member preparation courses that prepare recruits to satisfy the exhausting requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is looking for to reconnect with youth and their influencers by revealing them the worth of serving.
” The next generation of Americans to serve must understand that there has never been a much better time for them to select military service,” Helland referall.us stated.
Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Flying Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder helps with a panel on fiscal year 2025 recruiting objectives at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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” Youth today look for a larger purpose in their lives and desire jobs where they have higher participation in decision-making and can create a direct concrete impact,” she continued. “Military service provides all of this.”
Explaining that U.S. military service uses more than 250 professions which it represents one of the most highly informed organizations throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland said the Defense Department is striving to counter the narrative that signing up with the armed force is an alternative to going to college or “a choice of last option.”
” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans comprehend that military service is a path to greater education and career chances while defending democracy and the liberties we love,” Helland said.
She included that DOD is reframing this story. For instance, the department’s Joint Advertising Marketing research and Studies program will quickly release a campaign to build familiarity with the American public about the value of military service. Plans are also continuing to have adult influencers advocate for military service.