Only 0.45% of our population currently serves in our armed forces. Why do you think this is so?

Sgt Joe LaBranche - There are about 2.2M to 2.3M people in the Armed Forces (excluding DoD civilians), and around 320M people in the US population. So that would be 0.7%. Though that isn't really fair since 23% of the population is under 18 years old and can't serve. Also, over 15% of the population is over 65 and can't serve. So when looking at just adults, the US military is a little over 1% of the population.

It's possible the recruiter was only counting active duty and not reservists. Either way, whether it's 0.5%, 0.7%, or 1.5%, it's a relatively low number. The US military can be any size our government wants it to be, it's just a matter of what our elected officials appropriate.

Reference below:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-percentage-of-americans-have-served-in-the-military/
As of Jan. 31, there were close to 1.4 million people serving in the U.S. armed forces, according to the latest numbers from the Defense Manpower Data Center, a body of the Department of Defense. That means that 0.4 percent of the American population is active military personnel.

As of 2014, the VA estimates there were 22 million military veterans in the U.S. population. If you add their figures on veterans to the active personnel numbers mentioned above, 7.3 percent of all living Americans have served in the military at some point in their lives.

But since only 2 million veterans and about 200,000 current personnel are women, that overall percentage varies a lot by gender — 1.4 percent of all female Americans have ever served in the armed services, compared to 13.4 percent of all male Americans.

Sgt Joe LaBranche - According to the DMDC link you sent, there are 1.3M people on active duty, but you forgot the 823,000 on the reserve component which serve as well. That brings the current force to 2.1M, or 0.7% of the population. Reservists regularly deploy and are serving our country in uniform. They should be included in the calculation. Though again, whether it's 0.5% or 0.7%, it's a small number. It's up to our elected representatives to determine exactly what size the US military is.

Link for reserve component strength: https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/dwp/rest/download?fileName=DRS_42486_SelRes_201511.pdf&groupName=resRankGrade

Then there's always the combat service metric some like to cite that cuts it down to .45%.

Good and bad sides to it, certainly a divide that exists, but good that there isn't compulsory service.

Pansy generation

SFC (Join to see)
True...and it is four years old, so that number has dropped, and will be lower tomorrow, as we lose WWii, Korea, Vietnam veterans a lot faster than we have people joining.

MSG Brad Sand - Good points.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-percentage-of-americans-have-served-in-the-military/
As of Jan. 31, there were close to 1.4 million people serving in the U.S. armed forces, according to the latest numbers from the Defense Manpower Data Center, a body of the Department of Defense. That means that 0.4 percent of the American population is active military personnel.

As of 2014, the VA estimates there were 22 million military veterans in the U.S. population. If you add their figures on veterans to the active personnel numbers mentioned above, 7.3 percent of all living Americans have served in the military at some point in their lives.

But since only 2 million veterans and about 200,000 current personnel are women, that overall percentage varies a lot by gender — 1.4 percent of all female Americans have ever served in the armed services, compared to 13.4 percent of all male Americans.

The numbers change somewhat for this new generation where we see 12% for men under the age of 35... however that is still a considerable minority. I do believe keeping that percentage above 10% is important though and that downsizing the military at this point isn't really a good idea...