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What does MOS mean?

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MOS - Military Occupational Specialty

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MOS - Military Occupation Specialty

Army speak for your job. An Infantryman is an 11B, a combat medic is a 68W, etc.

As different MOSes have different demands and different attrition rates, there are different rates of promotion. Typically, the Dept of Army will determine the number of E-5 and higher enlisted ranks are needed (call it X). From that number you subtract the number that are already in service (Y) to get the number of promotions for that MOS (Z) .... X - Y = Z

The Army then looks at it’s list of those eligible for promotion and ranks them by points. It promotes from top down till it either meets the Z requirement or runs out of eligible candidates for promotion.

This is of course an oversimplification, but it is the basic pattern.