The Defense Science Board Task Force On Human Resources Strategy

The Department of Defense (DoD) employs more than three million people. Nearly half of its personnel, 1.44 million, are active duty military. About 870,000 Reservists, composed of 410,000 Selected Reservists and 460,000 National Guard personnel, add to the active duty force. Civilian personnel make up the remaining workforce, numbering about 730,000. These three million employees are supported by an array of defense contractors providing a wide variety of goods and services to the Department. Moreover, the Department spends more than half of its $270 billion budget on pay and allowances alone. With a workforce this large, varied, diverse, and important, it is not surprising that its management is a uniquely challenging undertaking. The human resource challenges facing DoD have changed rapidly over the last decade as a result of many factors. A robust economy, civilian sector competition for employees to fill high-technology positions, declining American public interest in public service, major changes in the Department's missions and operational tempo, and a significant downsizing of the Department's workforce are a few examples. Reducing the size of the overall workforce by more than a million personnel, from a high in 1987 of 4.1 million, has left in place a very different force distribution - in age, education, and skill.