Table 7.4 reports, by Service, the rates of fathers and mothers who were employed.  In the CPS, the civilian labor force is defined as all employed and unemployed civilians 16 years and over. [1]   Unemployed, however, is limited to those civilians who made a specific effort to find a job within the past four weeks.  All other persons are “not in the labor force.”  For this report, civilian comparison employment computations are based on all parents in the non-institutional population, including those not in the labor force. [2]   The three employment categories (employed, unemployed, not in the labor force) are included because recruits’ parents represent the total population, not just the defined “labor force.”

DoD recruit mothers were somewhat more likely to be employed than CPS mothers (79 percent for DoD mothers and 74 percent for CPS mothers). [3]   Fathers were more likely to be employed than mothers, but there were no notable differences in employment between CPS and DoD fathers (89 percent of CPS and 90 percent of DoD fathers were employed).  Employment rates were similar across Services and components, although mothers of Air Force accessions were slightly more likely to be employed than the active duty average.

 

Table 7.4.  Employed Parents of FY 1999 NPS Recruits, by Gender and Service, with Civilian Comparison Group (Percent)
	Active Component				DoD Subtotal		Total
Gender of Parent	Army	Navy	Marine Corps	Air Force	Active Duty	Guard/ Reserve	DoD	CPS
Male	88.7	89.7	91.1	92.1	90.1	90.4	90.1	88.9
Female	76.6	78.4	79.6	81.6	78.6	79.2	78.7	74.1
DoD percentages exclude "no longer living" and "don’t know" responses. Source:  Civilian data from Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey File, October 1998–September 1999.

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