The Defense Department's armed services branches recruited 12.5% more individuals 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 speaks with members of the media throughout a panel on 2025 recruiting goals 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 previously this week, employment Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland said that the services increased the variety of recruits 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 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 have actually gotten in 2024," Helland stated.

" 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 opportunities, a competitive labor market and a declining eligibility amongst young adults."

Helland elaborated on those obstacles by describing that, for the very first time considering that the metric has been tracked, most youths have never ever considered the alternative of serving in the armed force.

The reasons behind that are multifold, Helland said. Young Americans have less ties to good friends or relative who have served in the armed force. There is a decreasing existence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of people in between the ages of 17 and 24 require some kind of waiver to serve due to any number of disqualifications.

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

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

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder helps with a panel on 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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" Youth today look for a larger function 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 offers more than 250 professions which it represents among the most highly informed organizations throughout the world and throughout all pay grades, Helland stated the Defense Department is working hard to counter the story that signing up with the military is an alternative to participating in college or "a choice of last resort."

" We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans understand that military service is a path to higher education and profession chances while protecting democracy and the flexibilities we hold dear," Helland stated.

She included that DOD is reframing this narrative. For instance, the department's Joint Advertising Market Research and employment Studies program will quickly release 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.