Army expects to meet recruiting goals, in dramatic turnaround, and denies ‘wokeness’ is a factor

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army expects to meet its enlistment goals for 2025, marking a dramatic turnaround for a service that has struggled for several years to bring in enough young people and has undergone a major overhaul of its recruiting programs.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said the Army is on pace to bring in 61,000 young people by the end of the fiscal year in September and will have more than 20,000 additional young people signed up in the delayed entry program for 2026. It’s the second straight year of meeting the goals.

“What’s really 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 took over the Army four years ago as restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic were devastating recruitment across the military, also flatly rejected suggestions that the Army is “woke.”

Critics have used the term to describe what they call an over-emphasis on diversity and equity programs. Some Republicans have blamed “wokeness” for the recruiting struggles, a claim repeated by President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, during his confirmation hearing this week.

Wormuth dismissed the 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 has vowed to remove “woke” programs and officers from the military. And during his hearing Tuesday, he told senators that troops will rejoice as the Trump administration takes office and makes those changes.

“We’ve already seen it in recruiting numbers,” he said. “There’s already been a surge since President Trump won the election.”

In fact, according to Army data, recruiting numbers have been increasing steadily over the past year, with the highest total in August 2024 — before the November election. Army officials closely track recruiting numbers.

Instead, a significant driver of the recruiting success was the Army’s decision to launch the Future Soldier Prep Course, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in August 2022. That program gives lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction to help them meet military standards and move on to basic training.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2024, the Army met its recruiting goal of 55,000 and began to rebuild its delayed entry pool. About 24% of those recruits came out of the prep course. Wormuth said she expects it will contribute about 30% of this year’s recruits.

The Army and the military more broadly have struggled with recruiting for about a decade, as the unemployment rate shrank and competition grew from private companies able and willing to pay more and offer similar or better benefits.

Just 23% of young adults are physically, mentally and morally qualified to serve without receiving some type of waiver. Moral behavior issues include drug use, gang ties or a criminal record. And the coronavirus pandemic shut down enlistment stations and in-person recruiting in schools and at public events that the military has long relied upon.

Wormuth said a private survey along with more recent data show that the key impediments to joining the military are concerns “about getting killed or getting hurt, leaving their friends and family, and having a perception that their careers will be on hold.”

That survey, done in 2022, found that “wokeness” was mentioned by just 5% of respondents.

Wormuth acknowledged that the latest data show one element mentioned by Hegseth — that the number of white men enlisting is a bit lower. She said the persistent criticism about wokeness could be one reason.

“Any time an institution is being inaccurately criticized and demeaned, it’s going to make it harder to recruit. And I think that is what we have seen,” she said. “In terms of ‘is the Army woke’ — which I will take to mean focused on things that don’t make us more lethal or effective or better able to defend this nation — I would say the Army is absolutely not woke.”

As an example, she said recruits get one hour of equal opportunity instruction in basic training and 95 hours of marksmanship.

She also said there has been an increase in minority enlistment. The service brought in the highest number ever of Hispanic recruits in 2024 and saw a 6% increase in Black recruiting.

In 2022, the Army fell 15,000 short of its enlistment goal of 60,000. The following year, the service brought in a bit more than 50,000 recruits, widely missing its publicly stated “stretch goal” of 65,000.

The Navy and the Air Force all missed their recruitment targets in 2023, while the Marine Corps and the tiny Space Force have consistently hit their goals.

Critics have also charged that the military has lowered standards under President Joe Biden’s administration. Asked if that was true for the Army, Wormuth said the service actually resolved not to do that to meet its recruiting goals. Instead, she said, the prep course helps recruits meet the standards.

Other changes that have helped the recruiting turnaround, she said, include an overhaul of the system used to select recruiters, which now chooses soldiers more suited to the task, as well as an increased use of data analytics to improve marketing and ads.

The Army also increased the number of medical personnel being used to help process routine waivers to move them more quickly through the system. A consistent complaint across the military has been that it took too long to get a waiver approved and that recruits were moving on to other jobs as a result of the delays.

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