The unemployment rate for Veterans who have served since 9/11 continues to be higher than the civilian unemployment rate. In an attempt to prepare service members for the civilian job market, the U.S. Army recently made participation in transition services mandatory. Photo by Department of Veterans Affairs.
In order to ease the transition to civilian life, the U.S. Army now requires all soldiers to participate in transition services before leaving active duty.
According to Walter M. Herd, director of the Army Career and Alumni Program (ACAP), fully implementing transition for all discharging soldiers will increase participation by 300 percent. Programs like ACAP and the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) are meant to assist separating soldiers with the transition back to civilian life, including help preparing for the civilian job market or for academia.
The high unemployment rate among post-9/11 Veterans has placed transition assistance programs under increased scrutiny. Some advocates have partly blamed the jobless rate among young Veterans on inadequacies in transition programs, including the fact that until recently, they were not mandatory.
For young Veterans, particularly those who enlisted in the military right out of high school, mandatory transition programs are necessary. Many of these Veterans do not have much civilian work experience and don’t know how to translate the skills they gained while serving their country into language a civilian employer would understand.
The Army’s new regulation was instituted after Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed the VOW to Hire Heroes Act last fall. The White House, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Department of Labor continue launching new programs addressing the transition challenges faced by the 2.4 million service members deployed to war since 9/11.
Online retailer Amazon.com is seeking Veterans to fill tens of thousands of permanent and temporary positions across the nation. The positions range from management operations, safety and corporate operations, and hourly roles in picking, packing and shipping/receiving.
Amazon set up a special page for military Veterans called Amazon Warriors, where Veterans can read how skills in the military has translated to their jobs at Amazon.com.
The company has been rated the #1 Top Military Friendly Employer by GI Jobs magazine and Most Valuable Employer for Military by civilianjobs.com. It employs military recruiters from each service branch, and a group of mentors to support and help recent Veterans adjust to the civilian work force.
The Veterans' Affairs Committee approved legislation aimed at reducing the unemployment rate among Veterans
The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee approved legislation Thursday that would create new programs and change existing ones in an effort to lower the unemployment rate among veterans.
“In today’s economic environment, finding meaningful employment is difficult, and it’s no different if you are a veteran,” Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla), committee chair, said in a statement when the legislation was introduced. “We must come together as a nation to keep our promise to those who have protected not only our Liberty, but the American way of life. It is our
duty to welcome these men and women back into society and match their skills with their jobs.”
The Veteran Opportunity to Work (VOW) Act was introduced in an effort to put the nearly one million jobless Veterans back to work and is targeting those who are between the ages of 35 and 60 and have been out of work for at least 26 months. The legislation primarily focuses on job training to combat unemployment.
It would ensure that the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) is effectively preparing service members for civilian life as well as make GI Bill funds available to Veterans of past wars for up to a year, allowing them to receive additional job training.
The VOW Act also strives to strengthen the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Act (USERRA), ensuring that National Guard and Reserve members who had to leave their jobs to serve their country will receive that position upon their return.
The bill would require Congress to work with the Department of Labor to address the problem of translating military experience and training into civilian certification.
Although the legislation was approved with bipartisan support, some Democrats, including the committee’s Ranking Member Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), objected to the way the bill’s programs would be paid for.
He described the nation’s current unemployment crisis as “a national tragedy,” but explained that he could not support delaying planned fee decreases to home loans for Veterans, which he described during a July hearing as “effectively taxing a specific group of veterans for using a benefit.”
The act would also limit the pensions paid to Veterans who are in nursing homes funded by Medicaid in order to pay for the additional costs.
The bill is expected to be voted on by the House of Representatives this fall.
President Barack Obama's American Jobs Act includes provisions aimed at shrinking the number of enemployed Veterans.: Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy.
President Barack Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act includes a plan to combat the growing unemployment rate among our nations’ Veterans.
“We ask these men and women to leave their careers, leave their families, risk their lives to fight for our country,” Obama said in his Thursday-night speech to a joint session of Congress. “The last thing they should have to do is fight for a job when they come home.”
The president’s plan includes the Returning Heroes Tax Credit, which is a credit of up to $5,600 for businesses that hire unemployed veterans who have been looking for a job for more than six months. It also includes the Wounded Warriors Tax Credit. This credit would give businesses up to $9,600 if they hire unemployed veterans with service-connected disabilities and have been out of work for more than six months.
If passed by Congress, the act would also create a task force that would focus on maximizing the career readiness of service members.
The increasing unemployment rate among military Veterans has received media attention in recent months. The Department of Labor Statistics announced in February that the unemployment rate among soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had hit 15 percent. The unemployment rate for the general population has been hovering at 9 percent.
The Jericho Project is one of the major national groups working to help homeless Veterans.
We’ve focused a lot recently on Veteran unemployment and homeless Veterans. So it gives us real pleasure to talk about government funded programs aimed at remedying both of those epidemics. The Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program (HVR), the only federal program that focuses exclusively on helping employ homeless Veterans, has just awarded over $110,000 to the Jericho Project. The Jericho Project is a national nonprofit that specialized in “enabling homeless individuals to acquire the skills and confidence to seek, get and keep jobs.” Jericho Project will perform the work on behalf of the U.S. Department of Labor, which funds the HVR Program.
Jericho’s Workforce Opportunities program hopes to enroll 60 Veterans in the program and find employment for at least 40 Veterans. Jericho has a career counselor dedicated to helping the Veterans acquire the education and/or training they need to pursue their career path. Jericho also searches for part-time and internship positions that may help Veterans gain confidence and begin a successful track record. It’s not easy, but the program takes a customized approach, searching out each Veteran’s area of interest and encouraging them along the way.
We’re just glad to see the U.S. Department of Labor and The Jericho Project move the needle a little bit on what has been an otherwise unequal labor trend amongst Veterans these past few years.
Check out more on the Jerico Project funding here.
In a speech to the American Legion’s 93rd National Convention in Minneapolis, President Obama informed attendees that he’ll fight to maintain funding for Veteran’s health and welfare programs during the process to control the federal budget deficit.
President Obama said that “We cannot, and we must not, balance the budget on the backs of our veterans.” Obama, who will attend ceremonies this year in New York, Pennsylvania andWashington for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, said the nation must honor, along with the victims, the sacrifices of those who went to war after the terrorists struck.
For more information click here. To see President Obama’s full speech, click here.
