The Army is expecting to reach its enlistment targets for 2025. This marks a dramatic turn-around for a service which has been struggling for years to attract enough young people. It has also undergone a major revamp of its recruitment programs.
According to an interview with The Associated Press conducted by Christine Wormuth, Army Secretary, the Army will be able to recruit 61,000 new young soldiers before the end of the fiscal year on September 30. In addition, the Army will have over 20,000 young people enrolled in the delayed entry program for 2026. This is the second consecutive year that the goals have been met.
“What’s remarkable is the first quarter contracts that we have signed are the highest rate in the last 10 years,” Wormuth said. “We are going like gangbusters, which is terrific.”
Wormuth who was appointed to lead the Army in 2004 as the COVID-19 pandemic was causing recruitment problems across the military, has also rejected the notion that the Army is ‘woke.
Critics use the term “wokeness” to describe what they consider an overemphasis on diversity and equity programs. Some Republicans blame “wokeness” as the reason for recruiting difficulties. This claim was repeated by Pete Hegseth’s nomination for Defense Secretary, Donald Trump, at his confirmation hearing.
Wormuth dismissed these claims.
“Concerns about the Army being, quote, woke, have not been a significant issue in our recruiting crisis,” she said. “They weren’t at the beginning of the crisis. They weren’t in the middle of the crisis. They aren’t now. The data does not show that young Americans don’t want to join the Army because they think the army is woke — however, they define that.”
Hegseth is determined to eliminate “woke” officers and programs from the military. He told the senators during his Tuesday hearing that troops would rejoice when Trump takes office and implements these changes.
He said, “We’ve seen it already in the recruiting numbers.” “There has already been an increase in recruitment since President Trump’s election.”
According to Army data, the number of recruits has been steadily increasing over the last year. The highest total was in August 2024, just before the November elections. Army officials track recruitment numbers closely.
The Army’s decision in August 2022 to launch its Future Soldier Prep Course at Fort Jackson (South Carolina) was a major factor behind the success of recruiting. This program offers lower-performing recruits 90 days of academic and fitness training to help them reach military standards.
The Army has begun to rebuild the delayed entry pool in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2024. Around 24% of these recruits were graduates of the preparatory course. Wormuth expects that it will contribute approximately 30% of the recruits this year.
For about a decade the Army, and the military in general, have had difficulty recruiting due to the shrinking unemployment rate and increased competition from private companies willing and able to pay higher wages and provide similar or better benefits.
Only 23% of young people are physically, morally, and mentally qualified to serve in the military without a waiver. Drug use, gang affiliations or criminal records are all moral behavior issues. The coronavirus outbreak forced the closure of enlistment centers and on-site recruiting at schools and public events, which the military had relied on for years.
Wormuth stated that a recent survey and a private study show that people are hesitant to join the military because they fear “getting killed or hurt, having to leave their family and friends, and feeling that their career will be put on hold.”
In a survey conducted in 2022, only 5% of respondents mentioned “wokeness”.
Wormuth admitted that Hegseth’s latest data confirms one of the elements mentioned in the article — namely, that the number of white men enrolling has decreased. She suggested that the criticism of wokeness was one possible reason.
When an institution is inaccurately criticized or denigrated, it will make recruiting more difficult. “I think we’ve seen that,” she said. “In terms of ‘is our Army woke?’ – which I’ll take to mean focusing on things that do not make us more effective, lethal, or better able to defend this country — I’d say the Army isn’t woke.”
She said that recruits receive 95 hours of shooting instruction and one hour of equal-opportunity training in their basic training.
She said that there was also an increase in minorities enlisting. In 2024, the service recruited more Hispanics than ever before and also saw a 6% rise in Black recruitment.
In 2022 the Army was 15,000 recruits short of its goal of 60,000. In the following year, the Army brought in slightly more than 50,000 recruits. This was far below its stated “stretch target” of 65,000.
Marine Corps and Space Force consistently meet their recruitment goals, but the Navy and Air Force miss theirs.
The military’s standards have been criticized by critics under the administration of President Joe Biden. Wormuth, when asked if this was true in the Army’s case, said that the service had decided not to do so to achieve its recruitment goals. She said that the prep course is more about helping recruits to meet standards.
She said that other changes have also helped to turn around the recruitment process, including a revamp of the system for selecting recruiters. This new system selects soldiers who are better suited to their task, and an increased use of data analytics in marketing and advertising.
To speed up the process, the Army increased the number of medical personnel that were used to assist in processing routine waivers. The military is always complaining that waivers are taking too long and recruits are moving on to other jobs because of delays.
