The Army has surpassed its 55,000 recruit goal for the fiscal year 2024 marking the first time in two years, MilitaryTimes reported Thursday.
The transformation of the Army’s recruiting efforts—including adding dedicated enlisted and warrant officer job positions, extending recruiter training by two weeks and using artificial intelligence to help organize prospective recruit data—ultimately helped the service meet its goal.
Christine Wormuth, secretary of the Army and a 2024 Wash100 awardee, said, “Our goal was 55,000 new contracts and 5,000 young people in our delayed entry program. We exceeded that goal of 55,000 by a few hundred, and we put 11,000 young people into the delayed entry program, which is going to give our recruiters a really strong jumping-off point to start towards our recruiting target for next year.”
The Army is currently modernizing its facilitation of various commands. For instance, the service is adding a digital dashboard of crucial recruiting metrics and reportedly moving as many as 40 physical locations to alternative areas to garner recruit interest. The service has also introduced the Future Soldier Prep Course, a pre-basic training program that helps prospective recruits reach physical and academic standards within 90 days.
Although the service has reached its annual recruiting goal, Wormuth emphasized an estimated drop of 10 percent in the number of college-age recruits nationwide in 2026, which is a top concern.
“The headwinds that we’ve been facing are not going to stop blowing,” Wormuth said.
“I think we’re going to probably continue to see pretty low unemployment. We’re still going to see 60% go to college. It’s a more competitive labor market. So we’re going to have to kind of keep fighting hard for our new recruits,” Wormuth added.
The Army has pursued 55,000 new enlistment contracts this year and another 5,000 for the delayed entry program to ship to basic training. Wormuth said recruiters already have 11,000 individuals in the delayed entry program headed to training for fiscal year 2025.
