An economic recession and the war on terror have given the peacetime military one benefit; lots of volunteers and fewer people wanting to leave. As a result, recruits have been easier to find, and recruiting standards have actually gone up. But now it's gotten to the point where some of the services have more people than they need. The U.S. Navy just announced that it was laying off 400 junior officers. This is an unusual situation, especially with a war going on. But a similar situation has developed with enlisted sailors as well. Here, there were some job categories that simply had more people than were needed. A major factor in these imbalances is that not as many first term officers or sailors are leaving. The surplus sailors were given a chance to retrain for another job, and there has been some similar shuffling around of officers. But for the officers, the end result was that 400 of them don't have a job any more. They are being given six months to find a civilian job.