New Army recruits are entering the service later in life than previous years, with the average enlistment age at 22.7, according to Army data.
That figure, which reflects the average age of active-duty and reserve recruits so far in fiscal year 2026, may reflect a shift from recent decades, when the average age was 21.7 in the 2000s and 21.1 in the 2010s, according to data provided by Madison Bonzo, the Army Recruiting Division’s chief of media relations.
Army recruiting leadership says the increase reflects changes in how the service approaches recruiting. Now, recruiters are looking beyond traditional high school to boot camp pipelines to reach a wider range of potential enlistees.
“One of the primary things we started working on in 2025 — and it has continued — is expanding our market,” said Brig. Gen. Sara Dudley, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, during a January media roundtable.
Dudley added that since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered high schools, the Army has been trying to expand its reach to older Americans.
“We have been trying hard to generate mechanisms at which to reach an older population in the United States that still qualify to serve in the military and [are] possibly more motivated because their round one and round two plans didn’t go the way they thought they were going to go,” she said, adding that those people “now have a few higher levels of responsibilities in their life, and are trying to figure out a way to do those things that they want to accomplish.”
Gen. Dudley also said the Army is looking for people with more specialized skills in professional fields. Those people, she said, “are not going to be 18-year-olds.”
There have been year-to-year increases in ages before, for instance, during the Great Recession-era surge. In 2007, Army data found the average enlistment age to be 22.7. In 2008, it was 22.4.
Beyond recruiting policy, experts say the data points raise broader questions about how and when Americans are choosing to serve.
Jennie Wenger, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, said that while she would want to examine age distribution data more closely to draw real conclusions, today’s increased average age might suggest a real change instead of a short-term fluctuation.
“My guess is this is a meaningful shift,” Wenger said, noting that older recruits do not tend to undermine force quality and often join with more education and slightly higher test scores.
Michael O’Hanlon, the Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at Brookings Institute, said that an increase in age alone is not enough to draw conclusions about a true shift in enlistment demographics.
That said, he ventured that the rise in enlistment age could also reflect deferred interest from people who were already inclined toward military service but chose not to enlist during the Biden administration due to what they perceived as cultural debates.
Under a different message from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, those individuals may now be reconsidering military service after spending time in civilian jobs.
“Hegseth, whether you agree with his campaign against so-called wokeness or not, has sort of changed the image of DOD, and he probably is getting a slightly different demographic,” O’Hanlon said. “So, this could be, to some extent deferred interest from people who might have been less inclined to join up during the last four years.”
Still, he said, drawing any conclusion would require more data over a longer period.
Eve Sampson is a reporter and former Army officer. She has covered conflict across the world, writing for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
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