Below I have posted two significant stories as it applies to today’s veterans and their job prospects. The US congress has recognized a big problem on their hand, and that is this country has a ton of unemployed veterans. The second story below puts it at about 30% unemployment in the US. That is a huge problem for those who want to get re-elected, and if your veterans are not employed, then when those vets start putting the word out about how worthless their congressional leader is, then a voting public tends to listen. In other words, the veteran vote is a very important vote to have and win over.
It is also just common decency and respectful to recognize the sacrifice and contribution that our veterans have made in the war, by implementing measures that will make their transition into civilian life that much easier. So I applaud the Senate for approving these benefits for veterans.
But what I wanted to talk about is combat veterans and security contracting. This industry loves combat veterans. It is one of the few industries out there that not only appreciate the combat experience and skills of veterans, but pays them pretty well for applying those skills and experience as security contractors in the war zones and throughout the world.
Back when I was in the Marines, there wasn’t a vibrant security contracting industry like we see today. It was a very exclusive industry back then, and companies only hired SF types or depended upon word of mouth and referrals in order to fill the very few security jobs available. And believe me, back then I looked high and low for any kind of contracting job that a grunt/infantryman like myself could work in, and they just weren’t there.
Now if I had available to me back then, the industry choices and jobs we have now, then I probably would have gone that route and been gainfully employed as a security contractor. Which brings me to my next point.
Security contracting is a great place for those with a combat arms background, and the war zone experience to back it up. This industry is only growing in my opinion, and it has been a steady source of employment for the last 10 years. But for an individual to be successful as a security contractor, they have to play the game and become a student of the industry.
Today’s combat veterans across the world will be needed to fill all sorts of security jobs throughout the world. From piracy, to energy security, to war zone duty, and executive protection– the work is out there. It is up to the veteran to put in the research and due diligence for finding that work, and applying.
Or better yet, to figure out what kind of work they want to get into, and pursue that. Maybe you do not want to carry a gun anymore? There are plenty of combat veterans who are working as contract plumbers/HVAC/electrical/etc. in the war zones or other countries. The veteran just has to be willing to put the effort in to get those jobs. But believe me, the companies in this industry need you and want you.
It is also cool that as a security contractor blogger, I can help others get into this industry. It can be intimidating to apply for this stuff and enter this world. No one teaches ‘contracting 101’ in schools or community colleges, and career counselors are pretty clueless about what this industry is all about.
With that said, there are still excellent sources out there for learning about this industry. On the blog over on the right hand side, I have a list of forums. These are the forums I tell folks to go to, anytime they ask about getting into this industry. I tell them to search the forums, read the stickies, and get a handle on what this industry is all about. I also tell them to read this blog and use the search feature, or read the other blogs out there that discuss the industry. Get informed and knowledge is power!
After all of that research, then the next step is to get your resume written and ready for the industry. I suggest folks pay for a good resume service to produce the product. That’s unless they have really good writing skills and are comfortable with making such a thing.
Then finally, get networked and sign up on all of the pertinent job boards out there. I always suggest Secure Aspects Job Board, but there are others out there as well. Get on Facebook and other networks with like minded contractors, and get yourself in the mix. Linkedin is a great place to look for work as well. Definitely bookmark all of the career pages of all of the companies out there, and check those once or twice a day too. Just keep looking, keep applying, be persistent, and you will eventually get a job in an industry that needs you. –Matt
Senate approves jobs benefits for veterans
November 10, 2011
A united Senate emphatically approved legislation Thursday intended to help unemployed veterans and companies doing business with the government, endorsing a measure that includes the first small slice of President Barack Obama’s jobs plan that is likely to become law.
The 95-0 vote will let senators head home for Friday’s Veterans Day events and take credit for helping some of the 240,000 jobless veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The bill would give tax credits of up to $9,600 to companies hiring disabled vets who have been jobless at least six months, and improve job training and counseling for veterans. Obama included the tax breaks in his $447 billion jobs plan, which has otherwise gone nowhere so far in Congress.
“Our veterans are one issue we should never be divided on,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chief author of the veterans’ provisions.
The bill also repeals a law requiring federal, state and local governments to withhold 3 percent of their payments to contractors. That statute, which has yet to take effect, was designed to thwart tax cheats, but lawmakers now say it makes it harder for those companies to hire more workers.
The House could pass the legislation next week.
For weeks, the two parties have battled to a standoff over Obama’s jobs package, which features a payroll tax break for workers and employers and money for repairing bridges and hiring police officers. Thursday’s vote represented a momentary respite in that struggle, waged in the shadow of 2012 presidential and congressional elections that are sure to be dominated by the economy.
Underscoring the ongoing partisan strife over the bleak employment picture, senators rejected a GOP jobs proposal by a mostly party-line 56-40 vote. The plan combined more than two dozen GOP anti-tax, anti-regulatory proposals and contrasted sharply with Obama’s approach, which leans more toward federal spending.
“Our vision is, let’s unleash the private sector,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. “Theirs is they’re going to hire a few more people to dig ditches and fill them in.”
The GOP jobs proposal would have revamped the tax code by dropping the top individual and corporate income tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent and require the Senate to vote on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. It would have repealed Obama’s health care overhaul, legislation passed last year to tighten federal oversight of Wall Street, and other labor, energy and environmental regulations.
Despite their divisions over the nation’s economic problems, senators were united in their desire to stage a preholiday vote to help veterans and show they are taking steps designed to protect jobs.
A backdrop to Thursday’s vote was White House figures showing that about 240,000, or 12 percent, of veterans who have served since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are unemployed.
Beyond increasing to $9,600 the tax credit for hiring disabled veterans, the bill also would create new tax credits of up to $5,600 for employers hiring veterans who have job hunted at least half a year and $2,400 for those out of work for four weeks or more.
In addition, it would expand education and job training benefits for veterans, improve employment counseling they receive while still in the military and provide an extra year of job services for disabled veterans.
Overall, the tax breaks and jobs programs for veterans would cost just over $1 billion, Democratic aides said. It would be paid for by extending a fee the Veterans Affairs Department charges to back home loans.
The law requiring governments to withhold 3 percent of their payments to contractors was enacted five years ago under President George W. Bush in reaction to government investigations finding that thousands of contractors were behind in their taxes by billions of dollars. But with politicians focusing these days on job creation, lawmakers say the requirement would keep companies from using the cash to hire more workers.
Economists say repealing the withholding requirement would have an imperceptible, if any, impact on jobs. Implementation has been delayed until 2013.
Annulling the withholding law would cost the government $11.2 billion over the next decade. The legislation makes up the lost revenue by making it harder for some Social Security beneficiaries to qualify for Medicaid, the federal-state health program for low-income people.
Story here.
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Unemployment for Young Vets: 30%, and Rising
Dan Beucke
November 11, 2011
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. Their rate of unemployment was 12.1 percent in October, vs. 9 percent for the U.S. overall. But that only scratches the surface of the employment picture for vets.
Dig deeper into the pages of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data and it becomes apparent that 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.
(The BLS provided us with hundreds of pages of data beyond what’s easily found on the Internet; if you want to analyze the numbers yourself, we’ve posted them for October 2011 and for October 2010 here.)
That 18-24 category only covers 320,000 veterans. I used BLS data to expand the bracket and calculate the rates for vets aged 18 to 34. Unfortunately, the trend still holds up: their jobless rate grew to 16.6 percent in October, from 12.6 percent a year earlier. For non-veteran men and women of that bracket, the jobless rate shrank, to 11.4 percent from 12.0 percent. The issue is not just that unemployment among young vets is high. It’s that if there’s even a limited jobs recovery, they are not sharing in it.
“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 “new” part is key. From age 35 on, for the most part veterans have a lower unemployment rate than non-vets. In surveys earlier this decade, veterans aged 25-34 also did well. The BLS released figures in 2005 that showed veterans in that age group with a lower unemployment rate than their peers (just 3.8 percent vs. 5.0 percent.) For 2008, the rate for vets 25-34 was just a shade above that for those who hadn’t served in the military. Now for that group it’s 11.7 percent, well above the 9.2 percent rate for non-veterans. What might be most worrying is that what’s happening with younger vets looks like a leading indicator: the cohort of veterans now entering the work force in the midst of the economic malaise may point to a future in which veterans are falling behind their peers.
Why would someone coming out of military service have a harder time finding a job? Think about the demographics of a young soldier. Most are men, and unemployment is worse now for men: 9.5 percent in October vs. 8.5 percent for women. Younger vets are coming right out of high school; the job market punishes those with less education. Many vets come from and return to rural and rust-belt areas that are struggling. And the cut-throat competition for jobs has been hardest on those out of work the longest; fair or not, eight years in the Army is viewed by some employers as eight years without private-sector skills and experience. At a job summit held by the House Committee on Veterans Affairs in September, Gallucci says, some companies said many vets have a hard time adjusting to corporate culture.
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. Some military positions seem to line up perfectly with their civilian counterpart — think of an emergency medical technician or truck driver. But that doesn’t mean the soldier comes out with the required licensing. Someone who’s been driving an armored truck through the mine-strewn streets of Iraq still has to pass state driver certification.
How could it get worse? Let’s say the Congressional deficit committee fails to achieve a breakthrough in the next two weeks. The result will be $500 billion of automatic cuts to the Pentagon budget over the next 10 years. There are a number of ways that could play out, but the House Armed Services Committee estimated in September such an outcome would push nearly 200,000 additional soldiers and Marines onto the job market. The draw-down of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is already sending more troops home.
It doesn’t help that a higher proportion of vets work for government (that’s even truer of disabled vets). That has been the hardest-hit employment sector recently. Over the past two months alone, 57,000 federal, state and local jobs have been eliminated. President Obama made it a priority for federal agencies to increase hiring of vets; 25 percent of all federal civilian hires in fiscal 2010 were veterans. At least at the state and local level, many vets move into police and fire jobs, which haven’t been targeted as much as, say, teachers.
Is there any hope? In a rare breakout of bi-partisan agreement, the Senate yesterday passed a bill that grants tax credits for companies that hire vets and overhauls job training and counseling. The House is expected to OK it next week. Daniel Indiviglio over at The Atlantic has analyzed the tax credits and found that while they may help some veterans find work, they probably won’t boost hiring overall. The job training changes, according to the VFW’s Gallucci, should make it easier for military jobs to translate into civilian certification.
In other words, it could help a little. Still, to quote George Mason’s Fuller, for vets “it gets worse before it gets better.”
Story here.