Re-enlistment rates plunged in 2008 - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Re-enlistment rates plunged in 2008

The Air Force’s re-enlistment rates for fiscal 2008 fell to their lowest levels — by far — since before the wars began in 2001, according to Defense Department statistics. But Air Force officials say their own broader measures show the service is still well-positioned.

The Air Force achieved only 72 percent of its fiscal 2008 re-enlistment goal, according to the Defense Department — a precipitous drop compared with the 97 percent the service achieved in 2007 and 113 percent in 2006.

But Air Force personnel officials downplay those numbers, arguing the Defense Department figures account for only the 15 percent or so of the enlisted force that is up for re-enlistment in any given year.

And more to the point, said Lt. Col. Ken Sersun, deputy chief of the Air Force’s force management division, the service made its end-strength goal for 2008.

“Retention is a factor that drives the ultimate goal that we meet end strength,” he said. “In terms of end strength this year ... we’re right in the ballpark.”

The Air Force ended fiscal 2008 a few hundred short of its authorized 328,600 active-duty airmen, according to the Air Force Personnel Center.

The Air Force’s own retention figures look rosier than the Defense Department’s re-enlistment data.

Officials said the Air Force’s retention measure — an airman’s average career length — is calculated based on several years of re-enlistment data, not single-year re-enlistment rates. The service’s 2008 goal was for the projected average career length of an airman to be 11.06 years. The Air Force achieved 88 percent of that, or an average career length of 9.72 years.

The service did miss its goal in 2008, but the average career-length number was up slightly from fiscal 2007, officials said, when it was 9.01 years.

Drawdown, fewer SRBs

Sersun said the primary factors in the Air Force’s re-enlistment and retention slump were the personnel drawdown and a resulting lack of re-enlistment bonuses in recent years.

“For most of the year, we assumed we were going from a 328,000 force down to 316,000 [in 2009], so we weren’t as concerned because that meant that’s less of a force-shaping program we were going to have ... this year,” he said.

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates put an end to the drawdown in June, and Air Force leaders have said the service will grow modestly during the next few years. Gen. Norton Schwartz announced he’s aiming for an end strength of 332,700 by the end of fiscal 2010.

“That’s when the retention issue became a little bit more serious for us,” Sersun said.

Mackenzie Eaglen, a military specialist with the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., said Air Force leaders should act quickly to fix the retention problem.

“The Air Force retention numbers ... are a red flag but not yet a reason to panic,” she said.

“Air Force officials will want to take immediate steps to stop the slide in numbers [and] try to isolate and identify the root causes of these low retention numbers.”

Who’s not re-upping

For the past couple of years, it was midcareer noncommissioned officers with six to 10 years in the service who gave personnel officials heartburn.

But in fiscal 2008, the Air Force made only 64 percent of its re-enlistment goal for airmen with fewer than six years in. Re-enlistment among younger airmen hit 99 percent of goal in 2007 and 113 percent in 2006.

And even by the Air Force’s broader retention measure, the service made only 80 percent of its goal among airmen with fewer than six years in. The service’s goal was to be on target for 58 percent of airmen in this group to progress to the midcareer stage, but it achieved a projected rate of 47 percent.

That could lead to shortages in future years among the midcareer group if the Air Force doesn’t fix the problem. In 2008, the service hit 84 percent of its re-enlistment goal for midcareer airmen, compared with 94 percent in 2007 and 114 percent in 2006.

Personnel officials say they have the problem in hand and will meet their fiscal 2009 retention goals, but were unable to say what those were at press time.

Money, better quality of life

The primary reason for their optimism is a greatly expanded selective re-enlistment bonus program this year.

In 2008, the Air Force made $53 million available for SRBs, but they applied to airmen in only 37 career fields. For 2009, about 17,500 airmen in 88 career fields are eligible for an SRB pot of $136 million. The service expects 9,800 airmen — roughly 56 percent of those who qualify — to take the re-enlistment money in fiscal 2009.

“It’s a scalpel approach,” said Lt. Col. Suzanne Wheeler, branch chief for enlisted force management. “It’s targeted at specifically those zones [and] specialties that we need.”

Sersun said he expects the weak U.S. economy to help retention as well. Traditionally, more service members re-enlist when jobs are harder to find in the civilian sector, he said.

But the Air Force is also looking at other factors that may come into play, such as quality-of-life issues and deployments. Sersun said. Deployments are likely a factor driving down re-enlistments and retention in career fields that deploy frequently, such as pararescue, combat controllers and security forces. But he hopes SRBs will be effective in retaining airmen in these fields.

Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Rodney McKinley and personnel officials also are looking at measures that might improve quality of life for airmen and boost re-enlistments, Sersun said, including steps to cut back on ancillary training and additional duties that consume airmen’s time.