Population Representation in the Military Services-Fiscal Year 2019 Summary Report

Since 1974, the Department of Defense (DOD) has provided this congressionally mandated annual report on the demographic and service-related characteristics of US military personnel. The Population Representation in the Military Services (PopRep) report provides comprehensive, reliable, and consistent data tabulations on military personnel for policymakers,
the media, and the public.

This Fiscal Year 2019 Summary Report highlights recent and historical personnel trends in the DOD services (the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force) and the US Coast Guard, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security during peacetime. It examines both the active component (AC) and the reserve component (RC) of each service. It describes the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of military applicants, accessions (new recruits), enlisted personnel, and officers as well as similar characteristics for comparable civilian populations.

A primary purpose of this summary report is to provide an accessible overview of the extensive amount of publicly available information on military personnel. The full selection of fiscal year 2019 (FY19) data tables, as well as PopRep reports for FY97 through FY19, can be found at www.cna.org/research/pop-rep. The FY19 technical appendixes (A through E), listed on the Contents page of the FY19 PopRep website, provide FY19 data on the demographics—including education and aptitude—of accessions, enlisted personnel, and officers of the AC and RC. Appendix D also provides historical data for selected demographic and service-related characteristics. Except where otherwise noted, data come from the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC).

This document provides summary figures, tables, and descriptions of the data in its appendix tables. Table references starting with letters refer to tables in the technical appendixes (e.g., Table A-1 refers to the first table in Appendix A), whereas table references without letters (e.g., Table 1) refer to tables in the main text of this summary document.

The summary report has six main sections. Section I summarizes overall endstrength (i.e., the total military population) and accessions for FY19 and highlights some relevant demographic trends found throughout the rest of the report. Sections II and III focus on the DOD AC enlisted force and officer corps, respectively. Sections IV and V, respectively, discuss the DOD RC and the US Coast Guard. Section VI concludes.