Research Summaries

Back The Performance of Hispanics in the Military: A Look Across Services and Into the Civilian Labor Market

Fiscal Year 2015
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Tick, Simona L.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary The first part of this study will perform an in-depth, across-service analysis of performance of Hispanic officers compared to that on Non-Hispanic officers in the U.S. armed forces. As the Hispanic population increases, so does their representation in the U.S. armed forces. Current data shows that about 11.3 percent of the Department of Defense (DoD) Active Duty force (157,206) is of Hispanic ethnicity. These trends have created great interest in the role of Hispanics in meeting the military’s future manpower needs. Hispanic males have the highest interest in military service and active duty propensity compared to other ethnic groups. Yet, Hispanics are currently representing 11.3 percent in the military as compared to 16.3 percent of the total U.S. population. This underrepresentation problem is greater in the officer corps than in the enlisted force as only 5.5 percent of total officers in the DoD is of Hispanic ethnicity. The issue of representation of Hispanic officers is especially critical at the highest ranking levels within the Navy, as documented by flag demographic data (Q4 NMBS slides provided by N134) showing Hispanics flag officers accounting in 2012 for about 240 officers in ranks from O7 to O10 or about 3% of the Navy officers corps. The representation and performance of Hispanics in the officer corps presents an ongoing challenge to Navy, and DoD policymakers in maintaining diversity in the military.
This study will bring value to the Navy by providing an all-services comparison analysis of the retention and performance of Hispanic officers compared to that of Non-Hispanic officers, and by identifying the factors (demographic characteristics, commissioning source, citizenship, country of origin, combat deployments, etc.) that explain the differences in performance. The findings will provide a comparative view of the performance of Hispanics officers in all military services and the factors that most explain the differences. Therefore, the findings will provide the Navy with decision support for creating interventions to enhance long term retention and promotion by a diverse body of officers and to enhance the representation of Hispanic officers within the flag officers ranks.
The second part of this study will provide a preliminary assessment of the performance of Hispanics in the civilian labor market. This part of the study will include two components: (1) a systematic literature review of labor market performance of Hispanics in the private sector, and (2) an investigation of the data sources that track the civilian market performance of college educated Hispanics, the group that is most comparable with that of Hispanic officers.
The value to the Navy is high: to better understand the performance of Hispanics in the military, it is important to have a better understanding of the overall U.S. labor market performance of the Hispanic ethnic group overall. Assessing the performance of the Hispanic group compared to that on Non-Hispanics in the civilian labor market is a large undertaking, yet it is important in order to better address Navy manpower and personnel concerns. The findings of this preliminary assessment of the performance of Hispanics in the civilian labor market will offer valuable guidance in shaping the larger effort of assessing performance of Hispanic officers compared with Hispanic civilian college educated workers.
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Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal