Posted on November 26, 2012
Unemployment Among Post-9/11 Veterans and Military Spouses After the Economic Downturn
Unemployment Among Post-9/11 Veterans and Military Spouses After the Economic Downturn
Despite concerns that unemployment among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is higher than it is for the rest of the U.S. population, veterans may not be doing substantially worse in the labor market than non-veterans with similar demographic and educational characteristics, a report from the
RAND Corporation finds. Based on American Community Survey data,
Unemployment Among Post-9/11 Veterans and Military Spouses After the Economic Downturn (12 pages, PDF) estimates the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans to be about 10.4 percent, compared with 10.7 percent for non-veterans. And when adjusted for demographic and educational differences between recent veterans and non-veterans — veterans are younger, more likely to be African American, and more likely to have college experience, for example — the unemployment rate among non-veterans falls to 9.9 percent, leading the report's authors to conclude that high unemployment rates among young post-9/11 veterans can be largely attributed to weakness in the labor market for young adults.
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