Attrition Among the DoD Civilian Workforce

Abstract

This study examines the determinants of attrition among the Department of Defense civilian workforce. We follow a cohort of civilian employees newly appointed in 2009 and track their separations through 2017. Using personnel records obtained from DMDC master files, we model the career lifecycle characteristics of employees and model how those characteristics influence individual behavior. This research strategy generates a series of survival curves that illustrate differences in attrition behavior across a variety of workforce subpopulations. The primary finding of the analysis relates to sex-based survival differentials for employees in different types of job categories. The DoD maintains a strong interest in ensuring that its workforce possesses the technical skills necessary to sustain a technological advantage over its adversaries . The study used a job classification code to identify whether employees are in STEM related career fields. Separate survival analyses were conducted for men and women within each job classification While non-STEM employees exhibited higher attrition among women, no sex-based attrition differential existed for the employees in STEM career fields. This finding highlights the need for increased recruitment efforts and education campaigns to increase representation among women in STEM job categories within the DoD civilian workforce. Another important finding is that there is a significant gender-gap in appointees that have prior active duty service. Our analysis of the 2009 cohort reveals how the DoD relies on a large influx of employees that have retired from active duty military service and wish to pursue secondary careers as civilians. Women make up a disproportionately small share of these new hires. As the DoD considers its future recruitment strategies for civilian positions, it should consider how these jobs are advertised and communicated to retiring active duty personnel and seek to identify how it can increase the visibility of these positions to women. This findings from this analysis are especially relevant because there is a lack of studies using actual employee attrition behavior in the public-sector human resource management literature. The data used in this analysis describing and following the 2009 employee cohort is a major step forward in making use of available personnel data to generate information that can help guide human resource management for the DoD. Much of the prior research has had to rely on agency average attrition rates as well as inaccurate proxies for actual employee behavior. Additionally, the focus of this study on the civilian workforce makes these findings more generally externalizable to other public sector employees. Managers outside of the DoD may find value in these results as they consider how to manage workforce attrition in other public-sector contexts.