Army expects to meet recruiting goals, in dramatic turnaround
WASHINGTON — The Army expects to meet its 2025 recruitment goals a dramatic turnaround for a service that has struggled for several years to attract enough young people and has suffered a thorough overhaul of recruitment programs.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said the Army is on track to enroll 61,000 young people by the end of the budget year in September and that more than 20,000 additional youth will be enrolled in the deferred entry program. 2026. It is the second year in a row in which we achieved the objectives.
“What’s really remarkable is that the first quarter contracts we’ve signed are at the highest rate in the last decade,” Wormuth said. “We’re going like gangbusters, which is great.”
Wormut, who the army took over four years ago, when restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic devastated recruitment within the military, suggestions that the military was “woke” were also roundly dismissed.
Critics have used the term to describe what they call an overemphasis on diversity and equity programs. Some Republicans have blamed “wokeness” for the recruitment struggle, a claim echoed by President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. during his confirmation hearing this week.
Wormuth has denied the claims.
“Concerns about the military’s wokeness have not been a major issue in our recruiting crisis,” she said. “They were not at the beginning of the crisis. They were not in the middle of the crisis. They are not now. The data doesn’t show that young Americans don’t want to join the military because they think the military is woke – however they define that.”
Hegseth has vowed to remove “woke” programs and officers from the military. And at his confirmation hearing Tuesday, he told senators that the troops will rejoice if the Trump administration takes office and makes these changes.
“We’ve already seen it in the recruitment numbers,” he said. “There has already been an increase since President Trump won the election.”
In fact, according to Army data, recruitment numbers have been steadily increasing over the past year, with the highest total in August 2024 – before the November election. Army officials are closely monitoring recruitment numbers.
Instead, a major driving force behind the recruiting success was the Army’s decision to… Preparation course for future soldiersat Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in August 2022. That program gives underperforming recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness education to help them meet military standards and advance to basic training.
In the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, the Army met its 55,000-person recruitment goal and began rebuilding its deferred entry pool. About 24% of those recruits came from the preparation course. Wormuth said she expects it to contribute about 30% of this year’s recruits.
The military and the military more broadly have struggled with recruiting for about a decade as unemployment fell and competition grew from private companies that could and would pay more and offer similar or better benefits.
Only 23% of young adults are physically, mentally and morally qualified to serve without some form of exemption. Moral behavioral problems include drug use, gang ties or a criminal record. And the coronavirus pandemic has halted the recruiting stations and in-person recruiting at schools and public events that the military has long relied on.
said Wormuth a private investigation Together with more recent data, it appears that the top barriers to joining the military are concerns “about being killed or injured, leaving their friends and family behind, and the perception that their career will be on hold.” to stand.’
That survey, conducted in 2022, found that “wokeness” was mentioned by only 5% of respondents.
Wormuth acknowledged that the latest data shows one element Hegseth mentioned: that the number of white men signing up is slightly lower. She said the continued criticism of wokeness could be one reason.
“Every time an institution is unfairly criticized and humiliated, it becomes more difficult to recruit new employees. And I think that’s what we’ve seen,” she said. “In terms of ‘is the military woke’ – which I’ll take to mean focusing on things that don’t make us more lethal or effective or better able to defend this nation – I would say the military is definitely not woke.”
For example, she said, recruits receive one hour of basic equal opportunity training and 95 hours of marksmanship.
She also said there has been an increase in minority applications. The agency brought in the highest number of Hispanic recruits ever in 2024 and saw a 6% increase in Black recruitment.
By 2022, the army was 15,000 short of its recruitment goal of 60,000. The service came in the following year just over 50,000 recruitswhere the publicly stated “stretch goal” of 65,000 was largely missed.
The Navy and Air Force all missed their 2023 recruitment goals the Marine Corps and the small Space Force have consistently achieved their goals.
Critics have also alleged that the military has lowered standards under President Joe Biden’s administration. When asked if that was true for the Army, Wormuth said the service had essentially decided not to do that to achieve its recruiting goals. Instead, she said, the preparation course helps recruits meet the standards.
Other changes that have helped recruitment, she said, include an overhaul of the system used to select recruiters, which now chooses soldiers better suited for the job, as well as an increased use of data analytics to inform marketing and advertising to improve.
The Army also increased the number of medical personnel deployed to process routine waivers so they could be processed through the system more quickly. A consistent complaint within the military was that it took too long for a waiver to be approved and recruits moved on to other jobs as a result of the delays.