The veteran unemployment rate is below that of non-veterans, but obtaining a job is only half the battle. After years spent training for battle or deployed into combat zones, most former service members still struggle to find satisfaction in a civilian work environment.
“When you join the military, you're going to for a very specific reason. And when you're there, whether it's four years or for 34 years, you've got your mission, team, camaraderie — you have a very clear purpose in what you're doing,” Waco Hoover, a Marine Corps veteran and chair of the “Be the One” program at the American Legion, told The Hill.
“When you transition out, all those things are not readily available, and it’s not there.”
The U.S. is seeing some of the lowest ever unemployment rates for veterans, with the Department of Labor reporting a veteran unemployment rate of only 3 percent as of February, compared to 3.6 percent for non-veterans.
Yet job satisfaction among veterans is far lower than the general population. A 2021 poll from Hill and Ponton, a veterans’ disability law firm, found that veterans were more than five times more likely to report having no satisfaction at their current job than non-veterans.
One of the symptoms of this trend is high turnover rates among veteran hires, “and the reason for that is purpose,” Hoover said.
A CareerBuilder survey conducted last year found that 22 percent of veterans report feeling........