Returning Vets face high unemployment
The overall jobless rate has remained steady over the past several months, but veterans returning from the Middle East are finding it increasingly more difficult to find work. In September, the jobless rate for post-9/11 veterans was 10.1% - nearly 50% higher than the national rate, and more than a million veterans are expected to return from overseas and join the job market by 2016.
Most veterans have skills that are required to fill some of the open jobs, but those skills obtained through military service don't translate to employers as well as past work experience does for civilian workers.
“I have military experience and training, and the skills overlap, but it’s hard to get employers to understand,” said National Guard Capt. Kevin Massengill who has served in the Middle East for the past seven years.
Many returning vets, while they possess the jobs skills for open jobs, chose the military over attending college, so the educational component is also missing from their resumes. Still, many vets have hands-on specialized experience in information technology among other things, but tech companies have made a major push in 2013 for Congress to pass a comprehensive amnesty bill because they claim they can't find workers to fill open jobs.
The Senate-approved bill that the tech industry lobbied hard for includes doubling the number of foreign job seekers to the U.S. labor market over the next 10 years - many of those increases would be in tech workers including any foreign student who graduates with an advanced degree from a U.S. university or any foreign citizen who holds a Ph.D.
For more information, see Gannett.