Retention Analysis Modeling for the Acquisition Workforce

Abstract

We analyze the long-run career trajectory of a subset of the civilian AWF to find that 1) the AWF does well in retaining diversity, 2) one of the strongest predictors of career longevity is prior military service, and 3) workers with more education have longer careers. AWF leadership should invest in the workforce by encouraging/subsidizing education and actively recruiting and hiring from active duty to seamlessly transition them into the civilian workforce. However, as the AWF remains predominantly white due to racial imbalance at the point of hiring, the leadership should focus on attracting diverse workforce at the junior level. We then create a proof-of-concept dynamic retention model that is able to 1) simulate the long-run stay-or-leave decision of a representative worker and aggregate the individual up to the entire workforce, 2) introduce compensation changes to simulate the response of the workforce, and 3) preview the ability of the model to forecast and actively shape the AWF through dynamic simulations.