This Is The State Where The Most People Serve In The Military

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 8, 8:58AM EDT

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This Is The State Where The Most People Serve In The Military — © sorincolac / iStock via Getty Images

According to the Council On Foreign Relations, the U.S. military has 1.3 million active-duty personnel. That is down from 1.9 million in 1973. Of the current figure, 35% are in the Army, 24% in the Navy, and 24% in the Air Force.

India’s military is about the same size as America’s. Russia’s is larger at 1.5 million. China has the largest military at 2.8 million.

To determine the state that has the most active-duty military personnel, 24/7 Wall St. used military personnel data from the Department of Defense, current as of June 2021 and adjusted per 100,000 total state population. We based our ranking on active-duty personnel only — men and women serving in either the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard on a full-time basis.

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By our methodology, The number of active-duty service members is very different from state to state. In some, there are fewer than 10 service members per 100,000 residents.These same data show that states with high concentrations of military members tend to have a handful of very large bases with tens of thousands of service members. These troops, along with their spouses, children, and other dependent relatives, make up a large share of the populations in these areas and often serve the backbone of local economies.

The state with the most people serving in the military is Hawaii. Here are the details:

> Active-duty personnel: 3,002.2 per 100,000 people (total: 42,508)
> Largest base: Schofield Barracks (15,057 active duty personnel)
> Per capita defense spending: $5,280 (3rd highest)

Methodology: To determine the state that has the most active-duty military personnel, 24/7 Wall St. used military personnel data from the Department of Defense, current as of June 2021 and adjusted per 100,000 total state population. We based our decision on active-duty personnel only — men and women serving in either the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard on a full-time basis.

Data on the largest base by personnel in each state came from the “2019 Demographics Report,” compiled by Defense Department contractor Military OneSource. Total base personnel counts only include servicemen and servicewomen.

Per capita Department of Defense spending figures by state came from the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation and are for fiscal 2019, the most recent available year.

Total state population is one-year estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey.

Click here to read States Where The Most People Live In The Military

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.