This topic allows you to specify the year–to-year rate of growth (or decline), or annual increase rate, in the number of active employees (whether or not they are plan members).

If you wish to assume that the number of active employees in the population remains level, enter 0 in the Increase Rate column of the first row. Employees who decrement will then be replaced with new hires, provided that you include a New Entrant file when you execute the Core Projection. Note that, although the total number of active employees will remain level, the Valuation Number (i.e., the number of active members for whom a normal cost will be generated for the plan year) can vary based on the age and service conditions for eligibility. The number of inactive members depends on the number of actives decrementing with a benefit and therefore will not remain level.

If you wish to have growth in the employee population during the forecast, simply enter the desired rate of growth. Enter the rate as a decimal number, not as a percentage. You may enter rates of annual population increase (or decrease) that vary by calendar year. Complete a row for each increase rate. For example, if the valuation date is 1/1/2003 and the active population is assumed to grow at 5% per year through 2005 (i.e., until 1/1/2006) and at 6% thereafter, then enter:

From	To	Increase Rate
--	2005	0.05
2006	--	0.06

ProVal fills in the To column automatically, and the last rate will be used for the last year entered and all years thereafter. ProVal applies the increase rate to the number of active employees as of the valuation date in the year. Thus, the number of actives as of 1/1/2005 will be increased by 5% to get the number of actives as of 1/1/2006, the number as of 1/1/2006 will be increased by 6% to get the number of actives as of 1/1/2007, etc.. Note that the From box in the first row cannot be completed. Our example involved only two rates of increase: if you have several rates in your assumptions, you may need to press the ENTER key, to create a new row, when you get to the bottom of the spreadsheet.

Note that the rate of increase must be entered, not the number of net new hires (i.e., excess of number of new hires over number decrementing due to attrition) in a particular calendar year.

Also note that, to attain the level of growth you want, ProVal “hires” a fraction or multiple of the count on each record. This fraction or multiple generally will vary from year to year but will be uniform for all records in the New Entrant file. Thus, for example, if you have ten New Entrant records, the first five have a count of 2, the last five have a count of 3 and the specified population growth rate is such that 20 new hires are needed in a particular year, then ProVal will admit 20/ [(5 x 2) + (5 x 3)], or 20/25 = 0.8 times the count of each record. That is, 1.6 hires will be admitted for each of the first 5 records (total of 8 hires) and 2.4 will be admitted for each of the next, and last, 5 records (total of 12 hires). ProVal will not simply take the complete count of each record, in the order in which records appear in the New Entrant database, stop when it has “acquired” 20 hires, in our example, and thereby ignore the last record in the New Entrant database.

A word should be said also about negative population growth. You can enter a negative growth rate, but there are restrictions on the effect. If the negative growth rate specified is such that the rate of natural attrition of the active population is smaller (in absolute value) than the growth rate, ProVal will not “fire” employees to meet the assumption, i.e., the decline will be set equal to the natural attrition, resulting in less negative growth than specified. To reduce the active participant count below what can be achieved by the attrition that your experience decrement assumptions indicate, create new tables in which you have increased the decrement rates enough to generate the desired overall active population decrease. Hence, be sure that the rates in your experience retirement and termination reference rate tables support the desired level of negative growth.

Note that the active population growth determines a target population at each forecast valuation date.  If experience decrements do not decrease the population to (or below) the target, ProVal, as mentioned, will not "fire" employees to meet the target.  Furthermore, the target population at the forecast valuation date is not reset if it has not been met in the preceding year. For example, suppose that the baseline valuation date is 4/1/2004, 10 active members decrement each year and the active population growth is specified as:

From	To	Increase Rate
-	2004	-0.2
2005	2005	-0.1
2006	-	0

Then an initial population of 100 active employees will decline as follows:

Year	(A) Target per population growth	(B) Actives before new entrants hired for the year	(C) New entrants for the year = (A) – (B), not less than 0	(D) Active population = (B) + (C)	(E) Target met?
2004	100	100	0	100	Yes
2005	80 = (100*0.8)	90 = (100–10)	0	90	No
2006	72 = (80*0.9)	80 = (90–10)	0	80	No
2007	72	70 = (80–10)	2	72	Yes
2008	72	62 = (72–10)	10	72	Yes

Select Vary by group using coded database field to specify different growth rates for different population groups.  Select a coded database field to be used to determine the groups.  Then specify a group number for each database code.  The rate table will change to display the Increase Rate column, one for each unique group number you enter.  Each group will have increase rates applied separately, using the same method as described above for a single group.

Enter rates of -1 for all years to indicate that a group is closed.  In this case, your new entrant database will not be required to contain records for this group.  In all other cases, your new entrant database must contain at least one record in each group.

Select Keep hours growth consistent with population growth to specify scaling of the new entrant "Hours" field, as specified in the Census Specifications Active Data topic. When this option is selected, the new entrant hours for each record will be adjusted to keep total hours consistent with the population growth. For example, assume that the initial year of a core projection has 10,000 total hours and a constant population growth assumption. If in the first forecast year, the continuing actives remaining have 9,000 total hours, then the new entrants hours will be scaled to equal 1,000 total hours. Also assume that the new entrant data file has two records - one with 200 hours and a count of 2 and the other with 100 hours and a count of 1. Then, new entrant hours will be adjusted to be 400 (200 x (1000 / 500)) hours and 200 (100 x (1000 / 500)) hours respectively.