On Veterans Day in America, it’s sobering to realize just how badly the job market has turned against the men and women who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data: while the job market is slowly improving for most Americans, it’s moving in the opposite direction for Gulf War II vets (defined by the BLS as those on active duty since 2001). The youngest of veterans, aged 18 to 24, had a 30.4 percent jobless rate in October, way up from 18.4 percent a year earlier. Non-veterans of the same age improved, to 15.3 percent from 16.9 percent. For some groups, the numbers can look a good deal worse: for black veterans aged 18-24, the unemployment rate is a striking 48 percent.
That 18-24 category only covers 320,000 veterans.
“The numbers don’t lie,” says Ryan Gallucci, deputy legislative director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Washington. “The new veterans are going into the unemployment pile.”
The skills issue is particularly troubling. Hiring is strongest in jobs that require specialized education, and weakest for blue collar jobs, says Stephen Fuller, a professor of employment and economics at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. Even military jobs that are in the right ballpark for growth industries — say, software or electronics technician — may involve specialization that doesn’t readily apply to Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 or software-services jobs.
So ponder this America. A young Marine goes over 2011, to having missed his kids birthdays, his wife probably having cheated on him, no work, and bills to pay. the recruiters hipe about skills easily transferrable to the civilian sector are just BS. But we have 1,400 billionaires/millionaires who paid zero ($0) taxes in 2010.
Wake up!!! Civilization is based on the premise of community = communal responsibilities; communities take care of those who sacrifice for them = this was even true in the stone age....
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