Non-Rated Air Force Line Officer Attrition Rates Using Survival Analysis

The Air Force structures its workforce around rank structure and work specialty codes (Air Force Specialty Codes (AFSCs)). The challenge is to grow and manage personnel to fill a variety of skill sets at a variety of ranks over a 20-30 year planning horizon. To ensure that the missions are accomplished while adhering to congressionally-mandated force allocations, the Air Force is continually attempting to \right size its force by maintaining the correct balance of personnel in each career field. The Air Force conducts its force structure management responsibility by comparing historical attrition rates to current manpower requirements for each AFSC to determine the \optimal number of officers needed in each accession yeargroup over a 30-year career. Personnel analysts aggregate the individual yeargroup numbers for each AFSC and call this a \sustainment line. In this study, logistic regression was used to determine which factors are significant to predicting non-rated Air Force line officer retention. The variables considered were commissioning yeargroup, gender, source of commission, number of years served as enlisted, career field grouping, and distinguished graduate at commissioning source and all six were significant. All of these factors are included in the survival analysis, which yielded a total of 99 unique survival functions to characterize officer attrition behavior. Each of the survival functions provides a more specific representation of historic behavior that can be used to predict and/or shape future behavior. To best present the data to decision-makers, the unique survival functions must be aggregated after being weighted according to the respective percentage of the populations they represent