The Department of Defense has just released their 2018 DoD Demographics Profile Report, which is now available on Military OneSource here.
These are annual reports that break down who makes up the military community, from active duty to reserve to families. The report dives into demographics such as gender, race, age, education, family members, pay grades, installation population, and other facts.
The report found that the total number of military personnel has reached 3.5 million, with active duty making up about 1.3 million of that figure and the rest made up of Reserve and civilians. The Navy had the second highest number of active duty members at 325,395, behind the Army. That number is down 11.4 percent from 2000 to 2018.
While Navy active duty numbers have been falling, the same is true of the Army and the Air Force over the last two decades. Only the Marine Corps has experienced a slight increase.
The percentage of racial minorities in the active duty Navy has remained essentially unchanged in the last decade, increasing just 0.1 percent since 2010.
For a deeper dive into the statistics, you can find the report here.
