The White House is trumpeting a recent surge in sign-ups of new soldiers as a response to President Donald Trump’s reelection and return to office. But while Army recruiters have been on a winning streak in recent months, the service’s surge in enlistments began nearly a year ago as the Army overhauled much of its nearly $2 billion recruiting enterprise.
“We’re so back,” the White House posted Wednesday evening on X. “The @USArmy has achieved its highest recruiting numbers in 15 years, following a 12-year high in December. Under President Trump’s America First leadership, Americans are answering the call to serve “
The note amplified a similar post by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth a day earlier claiming that December had been the Army’s best month for recruiting in 12 years, and that the service “hit its best recruiting number” in 15 years in January.
“BOTTOM LINE: America’s youth want to serve under the bold & strong “America First” leadership of @realDonaldTrump,” Hegseth wrote.
Neither the White House nor Hegseth specified how many new soldiers the Army signed up in those two months, though an Army Recruiting Command post on X said Tuesday that Army recruiters had “their most productive December in 15 years by enlisting 346 Soldiers daily” (the post did not specify the month’s total).
But while recent Army numbers do point to a hot streak for enlistments, former Army officials and an expert on personnel issues noted that the Army’s recruiting numbers had started to rebound last year after the Army rolled out several major revamps of its recruiting enterprise, prior to Trump’s election.
For the 2024 Fiscal Year, which ended in September, the Army met its goal of recruiting 55,000 active-duty soldiers — a major win for the service after missing recruiting targets the previous two years. Based on its success, the Army announced in October that it had increased its recruiting target for this fiscal year by 6,000 new soldiers.
And, whether due to Trump’s arrival, new recruiting tools or a combination of both, that trend appears to be continuing in early 2025. Since October, the Army has made 59% of its recruiting goal for the 2025 Fiscal Year, a service spokeswoman told Task & Purpose Wednesday.
Hegseth also posted a screenshot Tuesday of a Military.com story about the Army adding 10 new training units at bases in Oklahoma and Missouri so it could train more recruits per year. However, at least some of those expansions were announced in August.
When asked directly if the Army has seen a direct link between Trump’s victory and the recent increase in recruiting, the service provided Task & Purpose with a statement:
“U.S. Army Recruiting Command is on track to exceed the fiscal year 2025 recruitment goal of 61,000 new Soldiers and an additional 10,000 in the Delayed Entry Program,” said Madison Bonzo, a spokeswoman for U.S. Army Recruiting Command, or USAREC. “As of today, USAREC has contracted 59% of the current FY25 goal. Our success couldn’t be possible without the hard work of our Recruiters, continued transformation of the recruiting enterprise and modernization initiatives to attract qualified talent into America’s most lethal fighting force.”
Recruiting overhaul and prep course
Two former Army officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Task & Purpose that the service’s recruiting rebound is the culmination of years of work on the issue, including an overhaul of its recruiting corps by adding an enlisted and warrant military occupational specialty: 420T Talent Acquisition Technicians and 42T Talent Acquisition Specialists. But the biggest breakthrough appears to have been the introduction of the Future Soldier Preparatory Course, a multi-week program that gets potential soldiers ready for basic training.
For Fiscal Year 2024, around 13,200 recruits — or about 24% of all new soldiers that fiscal year – enlisted in the Army through the course, according to the Army.
First launched in 2022 with major expansions in the following years, the Army’s Future Soldier Preparatory Course has played a major role in allowing the Army to reverse its recruiting shortfall in previous years by helping potential soldiers meet the service’s physical and academic standards, said Taren Sylvester, who researches military and veterans issues for the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C.
“We’ve seen over the last decade that more and more Americans were having a harder time meeting the standard that the military had set for enlistment,” Sylvester said. “That includes both in the physical aspect, meeting the physical requirements and height and weight requirements, and also in the educational aspects – not so far as degrees, but in test scores. And so, the Army’s specifically with prep course has been focused on both meeting physical requirements and meeting the testing requirements, which I think has done a lot to help people who want to serve be able to.”
Army recruiting began to pick up last spring and the service brought in a high number of new recruits in August, a former Army official said.
Among the other services:
- Marine Corps Recruiting Command spokesman Jim Edwards said the Corps is on track to meet this fiscal year’s recruiting goal, as it has for decades, thanks to recruiters and officer selection officers;
- A Navy official said the service has yet to publicly release its Fiscal Year 2025 recruiting data, but the service has followed a similar narrative to the Army in the last two years: after badly missing its 2023 fiscal goal, the Navy stood up its own pre-basic recruit training, which it calls the Future Sailor Preparatory Course. The course graduated 4,516 recruits last fiscal year , the majority of whom would not have been eligible to enlist previously, helping the service meet an already elevated goal for fiscal year 2024.
- The Air Force did not respond in time for publication.
Economics, education among reasons why recruits enlist
Overall military accessions have been rising for the past 12 to 18 months, especially among women, Sylvester told Task & Purpose on Wednesday.
“The turnaround absolutely began before the election,” Sylvester said. “You’re also seeing increases in the number of women who are joining the military. You are seeing increases in the number of racial minority people who are joining the military. It’s a larger trend than just what’s come about since the election.”
People join the military for various reasons, including economic benefits, said Sylvester, who noted that a recent report on military compensation found that the pay for troops with less than 10 years’ experience is higher than the “90th percentile of earnings for civilians.” Moreover, junior enlisted service members are also set to get a 14.5% pay raise this year.
“You see people who want to go out and explore the world,” Sylvester said. “You see people who want to have education benefits in the future. There’s no one-size fits all for why somebody joins the military.”