(a) Purpose: Availability is an estimate of the number of qualified
minorities or women available for employment in a given job group,
expressed as a percentage of all qualified persons available for
employment in the job group. The purpose of the availability
determination is to establish a benchmark against which the demographic
composition of the contractor's incumbent workforce can be compared in
order to determine whether barriers to equal employment opportunity may
exist within particular job groups.
(b) The contractor must separately determine the availability of
minorities and women for each job group.
(c) In determining availability, the contractor must consider at
least the following factors:
(1) The percentage of minorities or women with requisite skills in
the reasonable recruitment area. The reasonable recruitment area is
defined as the geographical area from which the contractor usually
seeks or reasonably could seek workers to fill the positions in
question.
(2) The percentage of minorities or women among those promotable,
transferable, and trainable within the contractor's organization.
Trainable refers to those employees within the contractor's
organization who could, with appropriate training which the contractor
is reasonably able to provide, become promotable or transferable during
the AAP year.
(d) The contractor must use the most current and discrete
statistical information available to derive availability figures.
Examples of such information include census data, data from local job
service offices, and data from colleges or other training institutions.
(e) The contractor may not draw its reasonable recruitment area in
such a way as to have the effect of excluding minorities or women. For
each job group, the reasonable recruitment area must be identified,
with a brief explanation of the rationale for selection of that
recruitment area.
(f) The contractor may not define the pool of promotable,
transferable, and trainable employees in such a way as to have the
effect of excluding minorities or women. For each job group, the pool
of promotable, transferable, and trainable employees must be identified
with a brief explanation of the rationale for the selection of that
pool.
(g) Where a job group is composed of job titles with different
availability rates, a composite availability figure for the job group
must be calculated. The contractor must separately determine the
availability for each job title within the job group and must determine
the proportion of job group incumbents employed in each job title. The
contractor must weight the availability for each job title by the
proportion of job group incumbents employed in that job group. The sum
of the weighted availability estimates for all job titles in the job
group must be the composite availability for the job group.
