Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

The Defense Department's armed services branches recruited 12.5% more individuals in financial year 2024 than in the year prior despite a challenging and indifferent recruiting market.


Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland speaks to members of the media throughout a panel on 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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Credit: Flying Force Tech. Sgt. Jackie Sanders, DOD.
VIRIN: 241030-D-XI929-1004


While speaking at a multiservice panel on 2025 recruiting concerns at the Pentagon previously this week, 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% increase in composed agreements, and the active parts' 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 gained in 2024," Helland stated.


" Nevertheless," she continued, "we need to stay carefully optimistic 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 decreasing eligibility amongst young people."


Helland elaborated on those obstacles by describing that, for the very first time considering that the metric has actually been tracked, the majority of youths have never ever thought about the option of serving in the armed force.


The factors behind that are multifold, Helland said. Young Americans have less ties to good friends or relative who have actually served in the armed force.