Young vets joining unemployment lines

[sabra]

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1979792.php

Young vets joining unemployment lines

WASHINGTON — Young veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are having a harder time finding a job than their peers who didn’t serve in the military.

Last year, about one in six veterans between 20 and 24 was jobless, nearly double the rate for nonveterans their age. It was brighter in the second quarter of this year, when young vets had an 11.2 percent jobless rate, but that was still higher than the 8 percent for nonvets their age and more than twice the overall unemployment rate.

Labor and veterans officials are surveying young vets to try to find out why. But experts have some theories:

•Some veterans are entering the work force for the first time and aren’t adept at explaining their military skills to civilian employers.

•Some who saw combat in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, which makes it difficult for them to work and makes employers leery of hiring them.

•Permanent jobs that offer middle-class wages and benefits are scarcer these days in some regions.

[SteppingRazor]

1. I think the most obvious reason isn't mentioned...

When a 24-year-old comes back from Iraq, people his own age have three years of experience in similar jobs. He's got three years of experience in a job that bears little or no similarity to civilian life.


Who would you hire for your job? The guy that's familiar with Microsoft's entire catalog, or the guy that can drive an M-1?

[Ezlivin]

2. They "aren’t adept at explaining their military skills"

Well, duh. How do you tell a civilian that your job was to kill anything that moves and if it moves again, call in an airstrike?

Doesn't that qualify you for customer service in many corporations?

[Judi Lynn]

3. This is really pathetic. I hope they don't get discouraged and reinlist.

They are lucky to get out of the war alive, and now they have to fight harder than others to live in the States.

Being deeply scarred from the war isn't exactly their fault. Too bad there isn't a federally funded facility they could use to help mainstream them back into the world, after their sacrifice of precious early working years.

[elehhhhna]

4. It's door #3, Bob. Same reason they enlisted in the first place.

[soothsayer]

5. Postal Service'll take 'em, especially if wounded