Memorial Day celebrations will be a bit more memorable for as many as 19,836 sailors Navy-wide who will get the word they've earned new petty officer crows by the end of the week.

Overall the opportunity to advance dipped for the 103,446 sailors who sat for their tests this spring in the active, reserve full-time support and the selected reserve combined with bringing the Navy-wide chance to advance down to 19.9 percent this cycle, down from 23.3 percent last fall and 24.7 percent shot last spring spring.

Winners this year are the reserve full-time support sailors who have one in three chance to advance across pay grades E-4 through E-6. That's followed closely by the selected reserve with a 27.84 shot to move up. Active-duty chances came in at just under 19 percent.

It's the third cycle in a row that the overall, force-wide advancement rate dropped, but it's a far cry from the wild swings only a handful of cycles ago that left many ratings in the lurch.

The reason: High retention across the active-duty force.

"We are a vacancy-driven advancement system and continued high retention in the active force, currently 108 percent of our goal this fiscal year to date has led to fewer openings, and thus a drop again this cycle," said Julie O'Neal, head of enlisted plans and policy for the chief of naval personnel.

The hope is for a slight improvement in the overall shot this fall when both this summer's Meritorious Advancement Season and next fall's test will combine to to determine the overall advancement rate.

But beyond that, she said, sailors' fate next year and beyond is out of the Navy’s plans as currently the Navy’s fiscal 2017 end strength won’t be clear until the final 2017 budget numbers are determined. 

The overall failure rate for exams crept back up slightly to 4.4 percent, up from just 4 percent last year and five percent the year before.

However, for the third cycle in a row officials engineered a simultaneous release of active-duty, full-time support and selected reserve quotas, today.

Officials announced today they also plan again for a simultaneous release of the names on May 25.

PAO SELRES Cycle 98 2016 E4-E6

Full Time Support Cycle 231 2016 E4-E6 Advancement Quotas

Active Duty Cycle 231 2016 E4-E6 Advancement Quotas

Active-duty

In the active force, all three paygrades combined saw the chance to move up in the ranks slip for the third straight cycle and come in below the 10-year average, O'Neal said.

A total of 89,796 sailors sat for their exams in March with 87,621 or 97.5 percent managing a passing score on their exams. With 16,550 quotas to go around, advancement chances came in at 18.89 percent.

The good news is that the lowest exam failure rate in the service came in the active force with just 2,175 exam failures for a 2.42 percent failure rate.

Full-Time Support

It’s good to be an FTS sailor this cycle as the highest these sailors have a 30.54 shot to move up to E-4, 5 and 6, the highest Navy-wide. 

This cycle, 2,206 FTS sailors took exams in March and 2,109 cut a passing score on their tests who competed for a total of 644 quotas.

Their failure rate, however was nearly double that of the active force with 97 sailors or 4.40 percent failing their tests and thus had no chance to advance.

Selected Reserve

In February, 11,444 drilling reservists sat for their exams with 9,487 or 82.90 percent managing a passing score and becoming eligible to compete for 2,642 advancement quotas which made for a 27.85 percent shot at advancing.

It's the second straight cycle of improvement for the SELRES who saw force cuts severely limit advancement for a few cycles as the reserve component slimmed to their current post-war end strength.

The dark cloud in side the silver lining for the reserves is that their failure rate remains highest in the force at 17.10 percent as 1,957 sailors did not cut a passing exam score.      

About Mark D. Faram

Mark D. Faram is a former reporter for Navy Times. He was a senior writer covering personnel, cultural and historical issues. A nine-year active duty Navy veteran, Faram served from 1978 to 1987 as a Navy Diver and photographer.

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