Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

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

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland speaks with members of the media during a panel on 2025 recruiting objectives at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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Credit: Flying Force Tech. Sgt. Jackie Sanders, employment DOD.
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While speaking at a multiservice panel on 2025 hiring issues at the previously today, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland employment 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, employment she said, the services had a 35% boost in composed contracts, and the active elements’ postponed entry program started FY 2025 with a 10% bigger swimming 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 employment stated.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to stay cautiously positive about the future recruiting operations as we continue to recruit in a market that has low youth tendency to serve, limited familiarity with military opportunities, a competitive labor market and a declining eligibility amongst young grownups.”

Helland elaborated on those obstacles by discussing that, for the first time considering that the metric has been tracked, most youths have never ever considered the choice of serving in the military.

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

To counter such challenges, Helland said the military has actually carried out a medical pilot program that enables employees to sign up with the armed force without a waiver for various health conditions – offered they meet specific requirements. Additionally, there are service member prep courses that prepare recruits to satisfy the laborious requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is looking for to reconnect with youth and employment their influencers by showing them the worth of serving.

” The next generation of Americans to serve should understand that there has never been a much better time for them to pick military service,” Helland 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 bigger purpose in their lives and desire tasks where they have greater involvement in decision-making and can develop a direct concrete impact,” she continued. “Military service offers all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service uses more than 250 professions and employment that it represents among the most extremely informed organizations throughout the world and across all pay grades, Helland said the Defense Department is working hard to counter the story that signing up with the military is an alternative to going to college or “an alternative of last hope.”

” We are working to reframe this story so that Americans understand that military service is a pathway to higher education and profession opportunities while safeguarding democracy and the freedoms we love,” Helland stated.

She included that DOD is reframing this narrative. For example, the department’s Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies program will quickly 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.