The Cost of a Military Person-Year. A Method for Computing Savings from Force Reductions

Abstract

While it has long been established policy in DoD that military personnel should only be used for military-essential purposes, it has proven difficult to define a concrete boundary that delineates functions that can be performed by civilians in support of military organizations or activities from those that must be performed by military personnel. Often, a discussion of the potential conversion of a particular position or function will turn on the relative cost of a civilian versus a military billet. The presumption has long been that employing a civilian to fill a give position costs less than billeting a military person with similar capability. This work documents our findings regarding estimating the economic cost of a military person-year and should help to inform the discussion of the relative cost of military and civilian personnel. It presents a new method for estimating the cost of a military person-year and reports the specific findings that emerge when this method if applied to officers and enlisted personnel by year of service (YOS).

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA470458

Entities

People

  • Carl J. Dahlman

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Business Administration
  • Civilian Personnel
  • Cost Analysis
  • Employment
  • Enlisted Personnel
  • Federal Budgets
  • Health Care
  • Health Services
  • Law
  • Management Personnel
  • Military Personnel
  • Money
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • Unified Combatant Commands

Readers

  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis
  • Military Leadership and Professional Education.