CBO

TESTIMONY

Statement of

Heidi Golding

Principal Analyst

The Effects of Reserve Call-Ups on

Civilian Employers

before the

Commission on the

National Guard and Reserves

May 17, 2007

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

SECOND AND D STREETS, S.W.

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515

This document is embargoed until it is delivered

at 9:00 a.m. (EDT) on Thursday, May 17, 2007.

The contents may not be published, transmitted,

or otherwise communicated by any print, broadcast, or electronic media before that time.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission, thank you for inviting me here to

discuss issues regarding the effects that call-ups of reservists have on civilian

employers. My testimony, which draws from and updates a study that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published in May 2005, focuses on three topics:1

B The characteristics of the firms that employ reservists;

B The combined effects of reservists’ activations and federal job protections on

civilian employers, including self-employed reservists; and

B Options for mitigating the effects of reservists’ activations.2

Activations and Job Protections

The military reserves provide trained service members and units that are available

for active military duty during peacetime and war. Over the past decade, the

Department of Defense (DoD) has dramatically increased its reliance on the

reserve forces, particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The

reserves are integral to current operations. Of service members deployed in

December 2006 in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 25 percent were reservists, and that

figure has risen to more than 33 percent at times since the conflicts began. The

total number of reservists called up through March 2007 exceeded 580,000. In

addition, DoD foresees continued reliance on the reserves, possibly increasing the

involvement of the Army National Guard in the coming year. (Throughout my testimony, “reserves” refers to the individual services’ National Guard and reserve

components: the Air Force Reserve, the Air National Guard, the Army Reserve,

the Army National Guard, the Marine Corps Reserve, and the Navy Reserve.)

Yet many reservists, when they joined the military, probably did not anticipate the

increased frequency and duration of the activations that have occurred during the

past several years and may be finding those mobilizations more disruptive than

they might have expected. To alleviate difficulties with call-ups, the Congress has

enacted legislation to provide civil and employment protections and financial

relief. The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of

1994 (USERRA), the primary legislation governing service members’ employment rights, guarantees the right of reservists to be reemployed by their civilian

employer after serving on active duty, prohibits employers from discriminating

against individuals in any aspect of employment because of their service in the

reserves, and mandates some continuation of benefits to reservists who have been

1. Congressional Budget Office, The Effects of Reserve Call-Ups on Civilian Employers (May

2005).

2. Although in some contexts the terms “mobilization,” “activation,” and “call-up” may have different meanings, in this testimony they are used interchangeably.
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activated.3 By ensuring that people who are interested in military service can

retain their jobs and participate in the reserve forces without fear of reprisal by

their civilian employers, those provisions may also aid DoD in its recruiting and

retention efforts.

The increased pace of reservists’ activations has focused attention on how call-ups

affect the civilian employers of reservists, including reservists who are selfemployed. Yet there is little information about the type and magnitude of the disruption that firms experience when their reservist employees or reservist owners

are activated. As a result, the impact of call-ups on businesses has not been systematically examined. CBO used survey information collected by the Departments

of Defense and Labor and by other organizations; it also interviewed reservists,

manpower experts, business and reserve associations, and others. Although such

data are limited and any conclusions drawn from them cannot be generalized to all

employers, they provide insight into the problems that some employers are confronting.

CBO’s Findings

CBO’s analysis revealed that most employers are unaffected by the activation of

reservists. Only about 6 percent of business establishments employ reservists, and

fewer than half a percent of self-employed people are in the reserves. Among firms

with reservist employees and owners, substantial variation is seen in their ability to

adjust to a reservist’s call-up. Activations create vacancies that firms would not

otherwise have had, while uncertainty about the timing and duration of those callups may also have an effect. Some businesses may absorb the loss of personnel at

little cost, but others may experience slowdowns in production, lost sales, or additional expenses as they attempt to compensate for the reservist’s absence. A

smaller number may find that they are unable to operate for lengthy periods—or at

all—without their reservist and may experience financial losses or insolvency.

Such problems are likely to be more severe for:

B Small businesses that lose essential employees,

B Businesses that require workers with highly specialized skills, and

B Self-employed reservists.

Small businesses (generally those with fewer than 100 employees) employ about

18 percent of all reservists who hold civilian jobs; businesses with fewer than 500

3. Codified at 38 U.S.C. § § 4301–4333 (2000), as most recently amended by the Veterans Benefits Improvement Act of 2004, Pub. L. 108-454, § 201-204, 118 Stat. 3606. The protections of

USERRA do not apply to self-employed reservists or reservist business owners, terms that are

used synonymously in this testimony to refer to both incorporated and unincorporated businesses owned by reservists.
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employees and self-employed reservists account for about 35 percent.4 (Most

reservists, about 75 percent of them, work for pay in the civilian labor force.) But

there are no precise data on the number of reservists who are key employees or

who have highly specialized skills. On the basis of survey information about

reservists’ civilian occupations, CBO estimates that out of the 826,000 reservists

in the Selected Reserve (the primary source of reserve personnel), between 7,000

and 28,000 of them probably hold key positions in small businesses. In addition,

about 53,000 reservists are self-employed. With more than 580,000 drilling reservists mobilized since the September 11 terrorist attacks through March 2007, CBO

expects that as many as 20,000 small businesses (0.4 percent of all such firms)

may have experienced financial losses or had significant problems managing their

workloads or scheduling, or handling other interruptions to their operations. Of the

reservists called up, about 37,000 of them were probably self-employed (less than

0.5 percent of the self-employed).5

In addition, CBO found that although USERRA provided employment protections

to reservist employees, it might be exacerbating the difficulties that call-ups

present for those individuals’ employers. The legislation limits firms’ flexibility in

avoiding vacancies and mandates the continuation of certain employee benefits

during a reservist employee’s call-up, imposing additional costs on some

employers.

Options for Mitigating the Effects of Reservists’

Activations

To help lessen the adverse effects of call-ups, two broad approaches are available:

Policymakers could enact legislation, or DoD could change its policies within the

authorities currently provided by legislation. Either approach, however, would

4. The data on reservists’ employment derive from CBO’s analysis of Department of Defense,

Defense Manpower Data Center, May 2004 Status of Forces Survey of Reserves (CD-ROM

release of data, February 2005). CBO’s estimates include almost 70,000 military technicians

who support the reserve units full time as government employees and are members of the

Selected Reserve as a condition of employment. Estimates of reservists who work for pay in the

civilian sector do not include Active Guard/Reservists, who make up about 9 percent of the

Selected Reserve and are employed full time by the military.

Beginning in August 2004, DoD required reservists to report certain information about their

civilian employment to DoD. That employment information resides in the Civilian Employment Information Database (CEI) and has recently become available. Although tabulations

from that database are not strictly comparable to those conducted by CBO because of methodological differences, the data appear to be broadly consistent.

5. In 2003, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey, a little more

than 10 million self-employed individuals were unincorporated; another 5 million were incorporated. The number of small businesses (those with fewer than 100 employees) comes from

the Census Bureau’s Statistics of U.S. Businesses for 2001, available at www.census.gov/epcd/

www/smallbus.html#empsize.
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require balancing a number of goals that sometimes conflict, such as providing

reservists with a wide range of protected civilian employment, assisting DoD’s

efforts to recruit and retain the military personnel it requires, minimizing the value

of the labor resources being diverted from the civilian economy and improving

DoD’s allocation of personnel, and avoiding harm to small businesses. In its analysis, CBO considered several potential measures to mitigate the undesirable

effects of call-ups, evaluating the measures in terms of those goals and their effects

on DoD, reservists, and their employers. Options might include:

B Compensating businesses through tax credits or direct payments,

B Subsidizing loans to employers,

B Providing or subsidizing call-up insurance for businesses, or

B Exempting certain reservists from call-ups.

The first three options, depending on how they were structured, could advance the

goals listed above, including that of maintaining the legislated employment protections that reservists enjoy. The options would at least partially offset financial

losses for firms that had reservist employees or owners who had been activated. In

addition, the measures might increase employers’ support for reservists’ military

service, which could in turn encourage more individuals to either join or remain in

the reserves. Moreover, if mechanisms could be developed so that DoD faced

more of the costs associated with call-ups, it would then be better able to evaluate

the most cost-efficient mix of reserve and active-duty personnel. In particular, it

might have an incentive to recruit civilians whose absence from their positions

would pose less cost to employers and thus decrease any amounts DoD might pay

in compensation.

The final option features a different mechanism from that of the others: It would

reduce the number or frequency of call-ups rather than compensate employers for

activations that had occurred. For example, DoD could exempt certain reservists

or particular civilian positions from call-ups. Employers might benefit from that

option, but if it was formulated too broadly, it might interfere with DoD’s efforts to

provide sufficient forces for war and other military contingencies. In addition, if

call-ups were limited, reservists who were eager to serve and who wanted to be

activated might be less satisfied with reserve service. By the same token, reservists

who found the current levels of activation too high might be more satisfied.

All of the options would assist at least some of the businesses affected by call-ups.

But none of the measures are likely to completely eliminate the problems that

firms face. The rules that established which businesses were eligible for assistance

and the extent of that aid would determine the degree to which a particular measure reduced the losses that some reservist employers and owners incurred from a

call-up.
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Another consideration is that the options entail either direct or indirect costs for

the federal government and, consequently, for taxpayers. Even the fourth option,

which calls for limiting certain reservists’ call-ups, would entail indirect costs.

Declaring some individuals ineligible for activation might impede DoD’s ability to

mobilize sufficient personnel and might discourage participation in the reserves.

DoD would then need to use pecuniary or other incentives to attract additional

people to reserve service.

The direct costs of compensating businesses through tax credits or direct payments

or offering loans or insurance—the first three options—could be substantial,

depending on how a measure was structured. The more targeted a remedy is, the

more cost-effective the solution will be. That notion implies that any remuneration

should be based on the actual loss that a firm experiences. However, calculating

the decrease in profitability associated with call-ups may be virtually impossible.

As CBO’s interviews revealed, some business owners, even when they could

quantify a change in profits, could not isolate how much of the decline was due to

a reservist’s activation and how much was due to other causes, such as a downturn

in the economy, shifts in demand for the firm’s products, or increased competition.

Instead, the basis for compensating an employer’s loss might be approximated. For

example, the reservist’s civilian salary or the costs of replacing the reservist could

be used as measures of the firm’s financial loss. Another approach would be to

base compensation more broadly on the type or size of the business.