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Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

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

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland talks to members of the media during a panel on 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, job 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 recruiting problems at the Pentagon previously today, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland 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, she said, the services had a 35% boost in composed contracts, and the active elements’ delayed entry program started FY 2025 with a 10% bigger swimming pool.

” [The Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the services will continue to construct off the momentum that we’ve acquired in 2024,” Helland said.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to remain cautiously optimistic about the future recruiting operations as we continue to recruit in a market that has low youth propensity to serve, minimal familiarity with military opportunities, a competitive labor market and a decreasing eligibility amongst young grownups.”

Helland elaborated on those challenges by explaining that, for the first time because the metric has been tracked, many youths have actually never considered the choice of serving in the armed force.

The factors behind that are multifold, Helland said. Young Americans have fewer ties to buddies or relative who have actually served in the armed force. There is a decreasing presence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of individuals between the ages of 17 and 24 require some kind of waiver to serve due to any variety of disqualifications.

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

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

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder facilitates a panel on financial year 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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” Youth today seek a bigger purpose in their lives and desire tasks where they have greater participation in decision-making and can produce a direct tangible impact,” she continued. “Military service offers all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service offers more than 250 occupations and that it represents one of the most highly educated companies throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland said the Defense Department is working hard to counter the story that joining the military is an alternative to participating in or “an alternative of last resort.”

” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans comprehend that military service is a path to higher education and profession chances while defending democracy and the flexibilities we hold dear,” Helland said.

She added that DOD is reframing this narrative. For instance, the department’s Joint Advertising Marketing research and Studies program will soon release a project to build familiarity with the American public about the worth of military service. Plans are likewise continuing to have adult influencers promote for military service.