Economy

Senators urge passage of bill to help vets find jobs

by Vicki Needham - 04/02/11 2:30 PM ET

Meanwhile, the national unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent in March below those rates for most veterans who have recently separated from the military.

For those veterans who’ve left the service since 2001, the jobless rate for females is 7.5 percent, more than a percentage point below the national average, while the rate for male vets is 11.6 percent, down from 13.3 percent in February.

More than 213,000 vets were still unemployed in March, according to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), a non-profit organization that advocates for veterans’ issues.

Several U.S. companies, including Cisco, AT&T, Verizon and JPMorganChase, have pledged to hire 100,000 veterans and military personnel leaving active duty by the end of 2020. Other U.S. companies, big and small, should follow this lead, Hagan and Brown wrote in an op-ed in Politico on Thursday.

This week, more than two dozen veterans with IAVA met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden at the White House and representatives from the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, about improving the job situation and lowering the unemployment rate for veterans.

“If you want to support the troops, support veterans, hire them,” Paul Rieckhoff, IAVA’s founder and executive director, said in a statement.

Rieckhoff’s group proposed a legislative package that includes job training and transition assistance for vets, tax credits for employers that hire vets and a comprehensive study of how military skills translate into civilian jobs.

“We had a very productive conversation with administration officials about concrete steps the private and public sectors can take to create jobs for veterans,” he said. “In the coming months, we look forward to working with the President and First Lady to bring critical attention to this issue and lower the new veteran unemployment rate by Veterans Day.”

Tags Michelle Obama