The following chart indicates army recruitment rates according to the level of urbanization of the county in which the recruit lived when enlisting in the Army Active Duty or Reserves. The recruitment rate is the number of military recruits per 1,000 of the 18-24 year old population. Recruitment data are FY2004.



As can be seen from the graph, urban areas (all counties classified as metropolitan together) have a lower recruitment rate that nonmetropolitan areas. Completely rural counties have the highest recruitment rate. However, the vast majority of recruits come from urban areas as that is where the vast majority of Americans live.



Data and statistics are available at zip code, school, county and state level on the NPP Database.

Notes: Army recruitment rates are for Army Active Duty and Army Reserves and are the number of recruits for FY2004 per 1,000 of the 18-24 year-old population. Data was obtained by the Army through FOIA requests submitted by Peacework Magazine. Rural-urban continuum codes (also called the Beale Codes) were used to demarcate each county for its level of urbanicity and rurality. We then grouped the nine levels into three categories: Urban, nonmetropolitan and completely rural as per descriptions of the coding system. The recruitment rates were calculated as the total number of recruits from each category per 1,000 18-24 year-old living in the category.