Skill Qualification and Turbulence in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve

Improving the personnel and training readiness of Selected Reserve units requires, among other things, the identification of problems in meeting readiness goals, the causes of these problems, and likely solutions. This report addresses the issue of individual job training in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve. For several reasons, a significant proportion of reservists in units are not even minimally qualified in their assigned jobs. These reasons include the large share of prior-service personnel requiring retraining, the large number of reservists who change units and jobs over their career, and force retraining required when the force structure changes or is modernized. This research has established a job tracking system for reservists and used that system to measure job qualification levels in different units and jobs. It has also measured the frequency of assigned job changes and provided evidence on the causes of such changes. Finally, it has measured average retraining times for reservists changing jobs.