After falling short of their recruitment goals for years, military service branches managed to squeak out a victory in 2024 and meet their recruitment targets, but just barely. 

As Air Force Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein said earlier this year, there was no single policy adjustment this year that changed the recruiting landscape, however the story of how the services managed to turn things around this year largely boils down to having a path for previously disqualified recruits to join the military, adjusting recruitment strategies and bringing in more recruiters.

The Army was at the forefront of many of the recruitment initiatives, mainly because they have the largest annual recruiting goals of any of the services — the service set a goal of bringing in 55,000 new recruits in 2024 and ultimately surpassed the goal by 300 recruits. 

This year’s success for the Army is largely attributed to the service deciding to invest in recruits who need help meeting body composition and academic standards. While the Army kicked off the Future Soldier Prep Course as a pilot program back in 2022, which has been extremely successful since then, the program was finally able to mature and significantly contribute to the service’s successful year. 

By the end of fiscal 2024, the prep course yielded a quarter of all new recruits.

“It sends a strong signal that service investments may be required to enable young Americans to meet service standards, but that those investments are paying off,” Kate Kuzminski, deputy director of studies and director, military, veterans, and society program at the Center for a New American Security, told Federal News Network.

Additionally, a number of structural changes such as having the head of the Army Recruiting Command report directly to the Army secretary, extending their assignment from three to four years and raising the rank to a three-star level, helped to drive accountability. And most notably, the Army established a warrant officer career field for recruiters — the first cohort of warrant officers to ever obtain a military occupational specialty in recruiting graduated this summer.

“In the Army specifically, these efforts will increase the professionalization and thereby the effectiveness of recruiters, and build a personnel model that will move away from forcing individual soldiers into recruiting billets involuntarily,” Kate Kuzminski told Federal News Network.

Following in the Army footsteps, the Navy launched its own sailor preparatory course to help potential recruits meet academic and physical fitness standards.

“What we found, especially on the side of future sailor prep course physical, which allows us to bring some folks in that are above body fat standards by up to 6% and have them work with our recruit division commanders. We had a lot of highly qualified, like nuclear trained operator qualified individuals that couldn’t quite get there. And so when we saw that the Army was using that, we took it on, and we’re 100% successful in getting folks through that,” Rear Adm. James Waters, commander of the Navy Recruiting Command, told reporters in October.

Efforts such as the Army and Navy preparatory courses are crucial given that nearly 77% of youth between the ages of 17 and 25 are not qualified to serve without some type of waiver.

But while all the efforts have been focused mostly on recruitment, Kuzminski said it’s worth keeping an eye on retention trends in the coming year. 

The Battalion Command Program, for example, which determines whether commanders can serve in leadership positions, assesses up to 1,000 lieutenant colonels per year. In 2024, nearly half of the eligible officers decided not to participate. 

“Recent reporting indicates that half of senior Army officers are turning down command, which has historically been the pinnacle of most officers’ careers. The demands of command and the necessity to continue moving at a time when officers are likely to have family requirements is likely the largest driving factor for this trend,” said Kuzminski.

And at the annual Association of the United States Army conference in October, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth echoed a similar sentiment  saying while the implemented efforts to improve recruitment and retention have been delivering results, more systemic changes are needed to meet the expectations of younger generations who increasingly prioritize stability, predictability and work-life balance.

“The lifestyle the Army offers hasn’t changed significantly since before the Internet was invented. We still expect our soldiers to move every two to three years, uprooting children from schools and friends, and upending the aspirations of spouses who want careers of their own.  We continue to rely on spouses and partners as a de-facto unpaid Army labor force, available to organize PCS moves and lead soldier-family readiness groups but often at the expense of work outside the home and the earnings that come with it,” said Wormuth.

At the same time, Congress has been getting after addressing quality of life issues for service members and their families, including pay, child care, spouse employment and housing to further support recruitment and retention efforts. 

And it looks like the results of that work will bring historic changes — the 2025 defense policy bill that is already heading to the president’s desk authorized a 14.5% par raise for junior enlisted troops ranks E-1 through E-4. The last military pay raise of this proportions hasn’t happened in decades.

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