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10-year low in staff sergeant selections

The airmen selected for promotion to staff sergeant last week were among the first to benefit from the end of the drawdown.

While only 12,205 senior airmen made the grade when the selections were announced Aug. 20 — the lowest number in a decade — the news could have been worse.

Officials had been eyeing an even lower number — though they wouldn’t say how low — in order to cut 8,000 enlisted positions in 2009, leaving the service with 251,000 enlisted airmen — the original goal of the drawdown.

But when Defense Secretary Robert Gates ended the cuts in June, more positions were left to be filled.

Now the Air Force hopes to keep enlisted numbers at about 258,255 through 2009, said Chief Master Sgt. Mark Long, head of enlisted promotions and evaluations on the Air Staff.

Although staff sergeant selections were unusually low this year, that does not mean senior airmen will have a better chance of promotion in 2009, officials say. Next year’s staff sergeant selection rate will be determined by who stays and who goes, said Jean Breeden, chief of the Air Staff’s End Strength Management Branch. “It will depend on the number of eligibles and how retention goes.”

The service expects to spend more than $120 million in 2009 for enlisted retention bonuses, which go to noncommissioned officers in undermanned career fields. That’s twice what was budgeted for this year. Details of the bonus offers are expected in September.

“As for the next [promotion] cycle, we really don’t know,” Breeden said.

If retention levels remain the same, next year’s promotion rate to E-5 will be about the same as this year’s. But if the bonuses have the desired effect, and more airmen stay, there could be fewer vacancies in the noncommissioned officer ranks, driving selection numbers to new lows.

Fewer airmen tested

This year’s selection rate was 43.45 percent, the highest rate since 2003, but still well below the high of 64 percent in 2001, according to Air Force promotion figures. But the number of senior airmen who tested was small — just 28,098, the smallest group since 2003.

At the start of the selection process in March, personnel officials thought about 36,600 airmen would be eligible to test in May and June. But about 4,000 of those airmen told service officials they intended to leave the service, said Chief Master Sgt. Michael Hall, head of the Air Force Personnel Center’s Enlisted Promotion and Testing Branch. Unlike in years past, the personnel center subtracted the 4,000 from the total number of eligible airmen, driving up the selection rate, Hall said.

Another 1,600 airmen had poor performance reports — called “referrals” — and cannot test until their evaluations improve; 500 more airmen didn’t test for other reasons, such as medical and family concerns.

About 2,000 deployed airmen also did not test, Hall said.

Until this year, deployed airmen could take promotion tests. However, commanders argued that airmen should focus on their work, not testing, while deployed. Those concerns resulted in a ban on taking tests while deployed, although airmen can study. Once an airman returns home, he has a 60-day grace period before testing.

There is no promotion penalty for testing after the normal testing window, Hall said. The same cutoff scores used for August’s selections will be used for anyone eligible to test this year.

Scoring trends

Promotion results continue to show that the only sure way for an airman to score ahead of his peers is by doing well on promotion tests. The specialty knowledge test measures skills specific to an Air Force Specialty Code and the promotion fitness exam measures overall knowledge of the Air Force.

Each test has a maximum score of 100 points. Airmen selected for promotion had an average score of about 54 for each test, while airmen who did not make the cut had an average score of about 44 points on each test.

High scores in those two tests were much more important than enlisted performance report scores. The average EPR score for airmen selected was 131.62 while those not selected had an average score only 5.5 points lower.

The Air Force hopes EPR revisions instituted last year will eventually lead to a wider range of EPR scores, ending the grade inflation that puts most airmen within a few points of each other, Hall said. This test cycle marked the first time the new EPRs were part of staff sergeant promotions, however their impact was muted since older evaluations also were factored in. Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Rodney McKinley is launching a new effort to reduce grade inflation.

Another deciding factor in the staff sergeant selections was an airman’s AFSC. Airmen in two dozen undermanned AFSCs had a 50 percent or better chance at promotion instead of the average of 43.45. The career fields include loadmaster, airborne battle management, imagery analysis, air traffic control, medical materiel and contracting.

The Air Force thinks that speeding up promotions encourages airmen to join and stay in those career fields.

The downside is that to gain those extra selections, airmen in 28 AFSCs had promotion rates of 39 percent or less. Those AFSCs include aircraft armament, vehicle maintenance, fuels, computer systems operations, bioenvironmental engineering and postal specialist.

The promotion results also show that 2008’s staff selects spent more time in the Air Force and as a senior airman before they were chosen.

This year’s selects have been in uniform for an average of 4.85 years and been senior airmen for an average of 2.25 years. In 2002, the average selectees had served for 4.35 years and been senior airmen for 1.64 years.

The longer time-in-service and time-in-grade numbers reflect lower promotion figures over the past four years.

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