NEW YORK—News of growing military suicide rates is making it hard for many troops to find a job after returning home.
“What’s happening now is employers are looking at veterans who are coming back and saying ‘you’ve been in combat, you must have a problem. Are you safe to be an employee?’” said Barry Searle, director of national security and foreign relations for American Legion, in a recent interview with The Epoch Times.
With post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rates soaring across the nation, vets are being branded a risky hire, says Searle, “But to brand everyone who is coming back as having a problem is not on the basis of fact.”
A veterans career expo at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum at NYC’s Pier 86 on Monday aimed to help the unemployed vets. At the “Be a Hero, Hire a Hero,” expo, veterans spoke about their successes and failures in the job hunt. The expo comes just a few days before Veterans Day on Friday.
“Right now it’s tough for anyone to get a job, whether you’re a veteran or not,” said Catherine Pierce, who served in the Air Force in 1983 and was laid off in November. “I think we may have a little advantage because they want to hire veterans ... but still it’s very difficult right now.”
Veterans should have a bit of a boost in the job market right now, since a tax credit of up to $10,000 is available for employers hiring eligible veterans before Jan. 1, 2012, through an extended Work Opportunity Tax Credit Program.
Veterans worked their way around the room, handing out resumes and connecting with representatives from businesses and organizations. Employee seekers included Verizon, Marshalls, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and the Port Authority of New Jersey and New York.
Employer Joseph Rodriguez, a five-year Navy veteran himself, is an installer with Teq, a company that provides interactive educational technology, including the popular whiteboard, and is in “80 to 85 percent of all the classrooms in New York City and the five boroughs.”
“We’re aggressively hiring and there’s a lot of positions that are available here,” said Joseph Rodriguez. “All ranges: human resources, IT, installation, [and] service, so it opens up to a really broad spectrum to some of the skills these guys have.”
A Teq handout listed 20 available positions, including Information Technology Specialist and Grant Writer.
According to a study by the Department of Labor, in 2010, “the jobless rate for veterans of all eras combined was 8.7 percent, compared with 9.4 percent for non-veterans.”
The study adds that nearly 22 percent of young male veterans who served after September 2001, compared with 19.7 percent of young male non-veterans, are unemployed.
A 2009 report on New York veteran unemployment from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand states that almost 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are unemployed. It estimated there were 17,300 unemployed veterans in New York City.
“It’s a pretty big number for out of work vets,” said James Hollis, who served in 1979 during the Iranian crisis, and has been unemployed for four years. “I’ve been going into these different interviews and different expos, but unfortunately I’m here at this one. Hopefully this one will be the one that gets me that [job].”
With additional reporting by Joshua Philipp
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