Working Wounded Blog: Support the Troops -- Hire Them
Aug. 30, 2006 — -- SupportTheTroops. SupportTheTroops. SupportTheTroops.
This is the newest "wallpaper" in the United States. You see it on bumper stickers, in commercials and hear it in conversations. Based on the number of times you see or hear the phrase, it's hard to not to think that we are doing everything we can to show the troops that we're behind them.
Think again.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly one in five veterans age 20 to 24 is unemployed. This is three times the national average. According to the government, approximately a quarter million veterans leave the military annually. So we're talking about many thousands of soldiers who served their country and have returned to an unemployment line.
These unemployed former soldiers list a variety of reasons for the high unemployment rate, according to a poll by CareerBuilder. They include a lack of available jobs where they live, employers who don't understand how the skills acquired in the military translate to the civilian world, lack of a college degree and the inability of the soldiers to adequately demonstrate what they learned in the military in interviews and resumes. Sure, these veterans could probably do a better job of presenting themselves and their experience in the employment dance, but I believe that based on their sacrifice, it is incumbent on the country's businesses and corporations to meet them more than half way.
A disclaimer: I have never served in the military. And it doesn't take a lot of reading between the lines of my writing to see that I, like the majority of Americans, believe that enough people have died in Iraq, and it's time for us to get the heck out of there.
But I do think our soldiers have tackled a really tough assignment, and the vast majority have represented their uniform and country well. I'm not sure that I'd say that returning vets should get special treatment, but for the youngest of the returning soldiers to have three times the unemployment rate of nonvets is embarrassing. And wrong.
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