FEATURE ARTICLE

August 2005

Job Shuffle Under Way in the U.S. Navy

by Sandra I. Erwin

The Navy is evaluating 25,000 jobs for possible elimination or transfer. The move is part of a broad reorganization designed to lower costs and improve the quality of the workforce, said Vice Adm. Gerald Hoewing, deputy chief of naval operations for manpower, personnel, training and education.

“We are creating a Navy that has fewer people, but these people need to be more technically focused, more experienced, more capable,” he said in a recent interview.

The process involves a meticulous analysis of each job description, followed by an assessment of whether a job is relevant to the Navy’s current missions and responsibilities, Hoewing said.

While many jobs will disappear, new ones are being created in response to growing demands in areas such as antiterrorism and special operations. “Many times we don’t have sailors with the desired skills,” he said. The drawdown primarily is attributed to a steady drop in the number of ships the Navy operates.

“We are down to 289 ships,” Hoewing said. “When you decommission ships, you don’t need that manpower.”

The Navy has 363,315 active-duty members (54,403 officers and 305,652 enlisted), 3,260 Midshipmen, 142,094 reservists and 176,768 civilian employees.

Any job cutbacks will affect mostly those in the active-duty and reserve categories, said Hoewing. Many administrative support positions no longer are needed, he said. Just 12 years ago, when the Navy had more than 320 ships, about two-thirds of service members were in sea-duty billets. By 2004, only half were at sea.

“As we’ve drawn down the number of ships, the support side, even though there is less to support, hasn’t drawn down as fast,” said Hoewing. “We want to make sure we take a critical look at that. We may have capacity in excess of what we need.”

Conversely, the job market is booming in areas associated with the global war on terrorism, Hoewing noted. Naval special warfare units will expand significantly. Masters-at-arms involved in antiterrorism, force protection and security missions have increased from 1,700 to almost 10,000 since the 9/11 attacks.

A number of new jobs are being created as well. Examples include civil affairs, riverine patrol, expeditionary logistics and “maritime domain awareness,” a buzzword used to describe intelligence operations for homeland defense. Security teams aboard military sealift ships are on the rise. Port security operations, which entirely shifted to the reserve years ago, are being returned to the active force, Hoewing said.

Officers who can command joint-service operations also are in high demand, he said. The Navy needs more financial managers, acquisition specialists, political affairs, foreign affairs and other corporate competencies that cross beyond the traditional war-fighting skills, Hoewing said.

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