COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: General
Military Demographics Representative of America, Officials Say
Jim Garamone, American Armed Forces Press Service
Nov. 23, 2005
That's the conclusion Defense Department officials reached followingexamination of enlisted recruiting statistics gathered over the past
year.
"There is an issue of how representative of America is the force," said
Curt Gilroy, the director of DoD's accessions policy in the Pentagon.
DoD tracks "representativeness" - as Gilroy calls it - very closely.
And representativeness can take a whole host of forms - race,
education, social status, income, region and so on. "When you look at
all of those, you find that the force is really quite representative of
the country," he said in a recent interview. "It mirrors the country in
many of these. And where it doesn't mirror America, it exceeds
America."
The data shows the force is more educated than the population at large.
Servicemembers have high school diplomas or the general equivalency
diploma. More servicemembers have some college than the typical 18- to
24-year-olds. "To carry representativeness to the extreme, we would
have to have a less-educated force or we would want a lower-aptitude
force," Gilroy said.
The study is part of DoD's focus to bring the best recruits into the
military. The services - who are responsible for manning, equipping and
training the force - take this data and apply it to recruiting efforts.
The force is a volunteer force; no one is coerced into serving. 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.
Critics say the U.S. military has too many African-Americans as
compared to the population and not enough Hispanics or Asian-Americans.
"We don't recruit for race," Gilroy said. "We have standards, and if
people meet those standards, then should we say they are not allowed in
because of race? That would be wrong."
The statistics show the number of African-American servicemembers is
dropping. That concerns Gilroy and his office. The military is a leader
in equal opportunity in the United States, he said, adding that few, if
any, Fortune 500 companies can match the equal employment opportunity
record of the military. The office is studying why young black men and
women are not signing up.
The office also is studying the Hispanic population in America. Census
records say Hispanics are the largest minority group in the United
States. 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.
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.
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.
DoD and the services will use these statistics and more to craft their
recruiting policies, Gilroy said.
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of
articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed
publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen
material relevant to the work of