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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon says 180,000 recruits joined up in the past year, meaning the U.S. armed forces will have enough troops to meet its needs.
The Pentagon says 180,000 recruits joined the U.S. military in the past year, enough to meet its needs.
The latest numbers from the Department of Defense show all four armed services reached their goals in terms of numbers of raw recruits for the fiscal year that ended September 30.
But officials concede the numbers include fewer blacks and high school graduates -- and more people with legal problems.
Dr. David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, noted Wednesday that the Army did not meet one of the department's "quality standards," falling short in the percentage of high school graduates.
The Defense Department's goal is for 90 percent of recruits to be high school graduates. This year, only 79 percent of the Army's recruits were at that level.
Chu said that's approximately the national average, but the Pentagon would like to do better.
The Army also said that the number of recruits who needed a waiver because of past criminal infractions climbed slightly to 18 percent. Last year, 15 percent of Army recruits needed a waiver. In a vast majority of the cases, the waivers were for past misdemeanor crimes.
And the drop in the number of African-American recruits -- to 15 percent of the total, down from 23 percent in 2000 -- is a troubling sign, indicating that military service no longer has the appeal it once did. E-mail to a friend 
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