Norfolk, Va. - The Navy wants you and your skills to stay in the service, so it's offering more bonuses, more money to tuition assistance and raises in some special and incentive pays.
The Navy also wants to add 5,600 sailors in the next year.
The Navy will have about 323,000 sailors and 285 ships by the end of the year.
The service is trying to raise those numbers to 329,000 by the end of 2016 the bulk of that being the carrier, the air wing, and the manning for cruisers.
Roughly a third of the Navy's enlisted ratings are deemed properly manned that's an improvement from two years ago where only a fourth of the ratings were properly manned.
On the other hand, there are 27 specialties that are considered over manned.
Officials say sailors in over manned ratings can help themselves now by looking for new occupations in undermanned ratings.
And there are 29 of them that fall under that category. The Navy says that's still a big improvement from where things were two years ago when 47 ratings were undermanned.
