The future of the Army's civilian workforce

"In keeping with the coming drawdown in military end strength, the Department of Defense is planning to scale back its civilian workforce over the next several years. After reaching nearly 295,000 full-time employees in fiscal year (FY) 2010, the size of Army's civilian workforce has started to fall. It is necessary to manage this drawdown so that sufficient people remain available in key positions. The authors projected the future supply of Army civilians under various scenarios and examined how the Army might manage supply to meet projected demand, by bringing together workforce supply and demand models. The RAND Inventory Model was used to project the supply of Army civilians, by command and occupation, based on historical patterns of internal transfers and separations, and various scenarios for future hiring. The supply projections were matched with demand projections from RAND's Generating-Force-to-Operator model, which translates budgets for the Army's operating force into projected changes in the institutional Army, to estimate the numbers of new hires or force reductions needed to meet the demand for civilians. The findings suggest that meeting future targets will require reducing hiring rates below historical levels but that substantial hiring will still be needed in most commands. If demand drops considerably below current projections, larger cuts would likely be required. Workforce cost is projected to change largely in line with the number of personnel. If requirements based on the FY 2014 President's Budget are met by FY 2017, nominal costs are projected to remain approximately constant, with expected civilian pay raises offsetting workforce reductions."--"Abstract on web page.