By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service, Nov. 23, 2005
...The data shows the force is more educated than the population at large. Service members have high school diplomas or the general equivalency diploma. More service members have some college than the typical 18- to 24-year-olds. [90% of recruits have a high school degree; the general population is at about 75%. For obvious reasons most recruits don't have a college degree, however, 92% of active-duty officers do. --y.]
...The military is one option young people have after high school. Military service offers money for college - money a large segment of the population doesn't have. For those people, the military is an attractive option. Many young people who don't yet know what they want to do see the military as a place to serve and decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives, rather than take a low-paying job or do nothing.
...The statistics show the number of African-American servicemembers is dropping...Young Hispanic men and women have a strong tendency to serve in the military, though so far, only the Marine Corps has been "able to break the code" to get significant numbers of recruits, Gilroy said. [African-Americans are 12% of the total US population, 18% of the armed forces, and 9% of the officers. Hispanic-Americans are 11.5% of the total population, 7.5% of the armed forces, and 3.5% of the officers. Euro-/white Americans (I can tell from the numbers that this overlaps some with "Hispanic" in the DoD's definition--unfortunately, I can't tell by how much; roughly 5%, I'd guess) are 75% of the total population (per Census definition) and 73% of the armed forces (per DoD definition). Native Americans are the most overrepresented group, 0.7% of the total population but 7.5% of the armed forces. --y.]
On the socioeconomic side, the military is strongly middle class, Gilroy said. More recruits are drawn from the middle class and fewer are coming from poorer and wealthier families. Recruits from poorer families are actually underrepresented in the military, Gilroy said. Other trends are that the number of recruits from wealthier families is increasing, and the number of recruits from suburban areas has increased. This also tracks that young men and women from the middle class are serving in the military. [The mean income for all 2005 recruits was $43,238, while the mean US income was $41,994 (adjusted to 1999 dollars in both cases to allow for comparison). 13.7% of recruits came from the poorest 20% of Americans, and 22.85% from the wealthiest 20%. The middle quintile ($35,000-$55,000) was the most overrepresented, but I couldn't find an exact stat on that. Nor, unfortunately, could I find any data on officers by income. --y.]
Young men and women from urban areas are not volunteering, Gilroy said. In fact, urban areas provide far fewer recruits as a percentage of the total population than small towns and rural areas.