Obama’s veterans jobs effort has modest success - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Obama’s veterans jobs effort has modest success

The Obama administration’s big push to find jobs for veterans in the federal government has had modest success, a report from the Office of Personnel Management shows.

In fiscal year 2010, the federal government hired 72,133 veterans, a significant number at a time when the unemployment rate for veterans of all generations hovered around 8.7 percent —and 11.7 percent for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

The downside is that the number of veterans hired by the federal government was only about 2,000 more than were hired in fiscal 2009, before the veterans’ employment initiative was fully launched.

Veterans made up 25.6 percent of all new hires in 2010, a modest 1.6 percentage-point increase. The number of disabled veterans newly hired for federal jobs was 23,140 in 2010, a 1.2 percentage-point increase over 2009.

A Labor Department report released in March said the government is a significant source of jobs for veterans. Almost 9 percent of employed veterans work for the federal government, while 8.2 percent work for local governments and 5 percent work for state governments, according to the report.

The federal government employs one in seven disabled veterans, the March report said.

OPM Director John Berry said in a statement that Obama’s veterans hiring initiative is “helping tens of thousands” of veterans. “These are some of the best, brightest and hardest working Americans in the federal government,” he said.

Berry also acknowledged that many veterans are still without jobs. “While we’ve accomplished a lot in the first year, too many veterans are still unemployed and we’re going to keep pushing to do even better going forward,” he said.

The House and Senate veterans’ affairs committees are working on legislation intended to help veterans find jobs, including more jobs in the federal government. One bill, the Hiring Heroes Act of 2011, includes a provision that would allow active-duty service members on terminal leave in anticipation of their discharge or retirement to get temporary placement in on-the-job training programs for federal workers.

Another provision would give separating service members priority placement in any federal job as long as they apply within 180 days of their release from active-duty.