RSSJune 19, 2006
Labor Dept., VA and Pentagon seek reasons for trend
By Karen Jowers
Times staff writer – Navy Times
The unemployment rate for young veterans is climbing, and the departments of Labor, Defense and Veterans Affairs are joining forces to find out why.
Last year, the jobless rate for veterans ages 20 to 24 was 15.6 percent, nearly twice as high as the rate of 8.7 percent among their nonveteran peers, according to the Labor Department’s Current Population Survey.
Overall, veterans of all ages historically have a lower unemployment rate than civilians who have never served.
But over the last 10 to 20 years, the unemployment rate for young veterans in this age group has consistently been higher than that of their civilian counterparts. And since 2000, the unemployment rate for these veterans has been going up at a much faster rate, while the rate for nonveteran civilians has been dropping.
Labor officials are concerned about that trend, said Charles Ciccolella, assistant secretary of labor for veterans’ employment and training.
“If there are young veterans who are having a tough time finding a good job … we want to make sure they know that the work force system and veteran employment specialists are there to help them,” he said in an e-mail response to questions.
Labor Department officials are working with VA and the Pentagon “to study and find out all the reasons for this trend,” he said.
No conclusions can be drawn from the data about veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, officials said, because veterans are not asked whether they served in the war zones; they simply identify themselves as veterans. Nor does the survey ask for information about branch of service.
“We do know that some younger veterans often take some well-deserved time off after they leave the military while they make up their mind about entering the job market,” Ciccolella said. “Also, we find that many of these young veterans are in school or training for jobs, and thus may be counted as unemployed.”
The data is collected in Census Bureau interviews of a random sampling of 60,000 households throughout the U.S., said Jim Walker, an economist for the Labor Department.
Veterans in all age groups have higher participation rates in the labor force than civilians who have not served, which means there are fewer veterans among the “discouraged workers” who choose not to even try to get jobs.
Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., has introduced a bill that would expand accelerated benefits programs for veterans to include industry sectors identified by the Labor Department as being likely to add a large number of new jobs or require new job training skills.
These include construction, transportation, retail, energy, hospitality, financial services, homeland security and health care.
This program, which allows benefits to be paid to veterans in a lump sum and covers 60 percent of some educational programs, is available only to veterans seeking training in high-tech programs.
Ted Daywalt, president of VetJobs, which runs a veterans’ job board partially owned by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said unemployment among young veterans is an issue of concern.
“But more research needs to be done before we conclude they are having trouble because they are in the military,” he said. “I am concerned as to whether this is a reflection of the lowering of recruiting standards of some services. I wonder if some of these people would have had a problem regardless of whether they came into the military or not.”
Daywalt would like to see a study on the extent to which these unemployed veterans took advantage of the training and educational opportunities available in the military; he said anecdotal conversations with young veterans indicate to him that some do not.
“It would also be worthwhile to study the enlisted evaluations to ascertain their performance while in the military,” he said. “If such a study were conducted, I think we would see some trends.”
About 63 percent of veterans are 55 and older, while 1 percent are under 25, Walker said. Among nonveteran civilians, 14 percent are under age 25.
Staff writer Rick Maze contributed to this report.