In 2014, the Veterans Administration (VA) reported that 22 million Americans were veterans. They based their figure on data they collected, as well as on data from the Department of Defense, the United States Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Social Security Administration. In addition, the Department of Defense reported that in 2015, there were 1.4 million active military personnel. These two figures combined add to 7.3% of Americans who have served in the military at any point in their adult lives. 

According to the VA, about half of all veterans are over 60 now, and 5.5 million of the veterans served during peacetime. About 7 million living vets served in one of the Gulf Wars, 7.25 million served in Vietnam, 1.89 million served in Korea, and a little over 1 million served in World War II. The VA predicts that the number of veterans will decline to 14.5 million by 2043.

There are approximately 22 million veterans. The population of the United States is about 323,038,000. Therefore, about 7% of the population would be military veterans.

We can break this down further. About 1.6 million veterans are women. 11% are black, 6.1% are Hispanic, and 78% are white. Just over 9 million of the veterans are over 65 years old. The largest group of veterans is those who served in the Vietnam War. This group is followed closely by those who served in both of the Gulf Wars.

There are a few more facts I can provide. Three states have more than 1 million veterans living in them. They are California, Texas, and Florida. About 25% of the veterans have a college degree. The average median income is slightly higher for veterans than for those who aren’t veterans.

Veterans compromise about 7% of the population today.

The current population of the United States of America is roughly 325,900,000 according to worldometer website.  According to the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics, the projected veteran population for 2015 is 22,000,000. Simple math yields a percentage of 1.3 percent of the population. However, that figure can be misleading due to certain unknown factors.

That number may not include veterans that are not residing in the United States. It may also not include veterans who are deceased though they are most certainly still veterans. Nor may it also not include those veterans who are still classified as missing in action. There are also many homeless veterans whose ranks may not be covered in these statistics.  Keep in mind also that the term veteran does not include those members who are active duty military.