Reserve sees rise in petty officer chances, as active and FTS dip

Even when factoring in spot promotions, the fall petty officer lists will be have slightly fewer less names than the past two cycles. But the numbers are still above the 10-year averages in a sign the advancement picture is stabilizing.

Overall, active component sailors saw a slight decrease in advancement opportunity this cycle. A total of 87,545 across all three pay grades sat for the exam. Of them, , with 86,073 passing. with 20,582 competing for a quota, 23.91 percent of eligible sailors will move up the petty officer ranks. advance. That’s down from 25.26 in the spring and a 27.6 chance to advance last fall

The 1,472 test failures accounted for an overall 1.768 percent failure rate. 

At E-6, opportunity dropped to 15.94 percent from 17.7 percent this spring. , down from the 17.69 percent chance this past spring — and 19.3 percent last fall. The one cycle decline is 1.75 percentage points, but over the past year, it’s dropped 3.36 percentage points. 

E-5 hopefuls will see a similar drop. This cycle has a 21.9 advancement rate, down from At E-5, the drop was nearly two percentage points to 21.91 percent down from 23.987 percent this past spring and  25.1 percent a year ago. 

Meanwhile, those seeking a petty officer crow had a 32.9 percent chance, three percentage points down from the last cycle.  entry into the petty officer ranks had a 32.94 percent shot at a petty officers crow. That’s down slightly from the 33.30 shot last cycle. Of the 27,172 E-3s who sat for the E-4 exam — of which 27091 passed and became eligible for one of the 9,107 new active crows this year. Just eighty one sailors failed their E-4 exams, a failure rate of .3 percent. 

FTS sailors also saw advancement drop, but not too much: 28.4 percent, down from 28.7 percent this spring. The bad news for FTS sailors shot at advancing took a slight hit this time, after last cycle’s slight increase for sailors in the reserve full-time support ranks. 

Chances of putting on E-6 were dropped 3.53 percentage points to 15.40 percent from last cycles 18.93 percent shot. Still Opportunity is still above the 12 percent chance seen last fall.     

At E-5, 694 took the exam and 687 passed. They are competing for 238 quotas to move up, for a 34.6 percent chance. resulting in a nearly two percentage point increase from 32.87 to 34.64 percent. Not bad considering last cycle’s  8.87 percent increase from last falls 26 percent shot. 

And again this cycle, Over half of the 316 E-3’s who took and passed their tests will get one of the 199 quotas to move up — that’s a 55.12 percent shot at moving up, up from 46.92 percent chance at moving up last cycle. And that, too was a 7.65 percent increase over the 39.27 percent shot seen last fall.

The irony of the Navy’s drilling reservists is that they saw across the board increases alongside a higher test failure rate. again in advancements with an even higher rise in sailors failing their tests. 

Selected reservists' overall chance to advance jumped from 20.09 last cycle to 26.83 percent, with all three pay grades are seeing a rise. jump in opportunity.

The increase came for the fourth consecutive cycle, in a turnaround from the force.-sAdvancement for these part-time sailors rising for the fourth consecutive cycle after a few years of force structure cuts that overmanned the Reserve force and saw advancement plummet for a couple years.

On the down side, more reserve sailors failed their exams this cycle than advanced in rank. Across all three paygrades, 2,535 sailors failed tests for a brought with it a 21.53 percent failure rate. And that is a significant increase from last cycles 2,008 failures and a 15.13 percent failure rate. 

By comparison, active-duty failures dropped this cycle to 1.768 percent, down from 3.17 percent last cycle. In the full-time support ranks, failures dropped as well to 4.10 percent, down from the Spring’s failure rate of 6.19 percent.

At E-6, 5,922 sailors took their exams and 3,924 passed. They are competing for 510 quotas to advance. The good news is that advancements at this level rose again to 13 percent, up from the Spring’s 9.74 percent shot which was 3.54 percent better than last fall's 6.2 percent.

This cycle, E-5 opportunity rose to 26.40 percent from last cycle's 22 percent chance. 1.95 percent shot with 3,932     test takers of which 3,424 passed and are competing for on of 508 quotas to move up.

And E-4 hopefuls have a better-than-not chance at earning their crow. This fall, they have has a saw a spike of The chance to put on petty officer in the selected Reserve again made a significant jump of nearly 14 percentage points to a 56.26 percent shot, that's 14 percentage points higher than last cycle. at moving up with 1,922 taking exams and 1893 passing and competeing for 1,065 third class crows.