The unemployment rate for veterans is more than two points worse than that of the general population, at 11.7 percent. President Obama has proposed addressing this problem with tax cuts for businesses that hire veterans. But according to a
Washington Post article on the challenges veterans face finding work, that
isn't the right solution:
More important than financial incentives for hiring returning veterans is making the skills and experience they earned in the military more understandable for civilian employers, experts say.
“There is not a great deal of knowledge with corporate America on a lot of the skill sets that come from the military,” said Stuart Keeter, a former paratrooper who is a vice president with Alliance International, a recruiting service that specializes in military veterans.
But it's not just a lack of knowledge on the part of employers standing in the way:
“There is a gap between what the military has trained people for and what employers need,” said Judith Crocker, director of education and training at MAGNET. “Also, veterans are often not very articulate in describing what they learned and what they had done in the military.”
For all the recruitment ads the military runs about the skills they teach, it turns out that going on the civilian job market having been a multi-channel radio operator, single-channel radio operator and psychological operations specialist doesn't make most potential employers go "oh, I know just what you can do for me; you're hired." And so far, preference for veterans in government jobs, education and job training funding, and private sector efforts to increase hiring of veterans is not making a dent in their abysmal unemployment rate.
It's not clear what the solution is, though it seems pretty obvious that tax cuts aren't it, and it sounds like any solution needs to engage both veterans and employers, helping veterans better understand the challenges they face and adjustments they have to make and drawing clearer lines between specific aspects of military experience and civilian jobs that need filling.