Publisher's Synopsis
Over the past ten years, maintenance career fields in the U.S. Air Force have been negatively affected by a series of events that have resulted in an experience shortage. Although there has been an improvement in Total Force manning since 2015, several skill levels are still experiencing shortages. To bridge the experience shortfall, the U.S. Government Accountability Office called for an Air Force retention strategy tailored to retain experienced maintainers. The RAND Corporation was asked to explore whether individual characteristics, economic and geographic factors, and the new Blended Retirement System (BRS) could provide additional insights into what predicts retention of this workforce. This report focuses primarily on aircraft maintenance career fields, with some attention to munitions and logistics career fields as resources permitted. The authors undertake two analytic approaches to examine the underlying determinants of retent