Unemployment for recent veterans has hit a historic low, but it’s not clear how many veterans are able to use their military experience to get meaningful employment.
The most recent generation of war veterans came home to a pretty rough economy. Joblessness for younger veterans back in 2011 was more than 12 percent, much worse than the rate for nonveterans. That number is now down to below 4 percent, but what that figure doesn’t show is the quality of that employment. Most of our veterans either found themselves unemployed or underemployed – underemployed being the worst.
The government doesn’t measure underemployment because it’s hard to define. One study did find that 43 percent of veterans leave their first civilian job within 12 months. Veterans’ unemployment is at a historic low, and plenty of companies advertise that they hire vets. But too many of those are dead-end jobs, he says, that don’t leave time to look for a better one.
Being a fast food manager or crossing guard is not the type of job that requires combat training or counterinsurgency experience.
The employment market was full at one point in time with people in business and government who had military experience. But now it’s only a tiny percentage who served, so a tiny number who know that a corpsman has a lot of medical knowledge or a quartermaster knows about logistics.
The employment market is not aware of how military skills relate, but you have veterans who also don’t know how to articulate military skills either in a way that civilians can understand.
The 2KHero Scholarship program has been established to give veterans an opportunity to start their own business, by providing operating capital and education through the startup phase of their business.
Considering the hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to train a soldier, many of the government programs setup to transition them back into society are simply not meeting their needs. The 2KHeroes Foundation is providing this opportunity for our Veterans, which will piggyback their military training by giving them additional business training and support. This additional training and support will enable them to contribute to society along with providing a substantial income for themselves.
How can you help…You can donating to the 2KHero scholarship fund by simply clicking the donate button, each donation will provide a business opportunity for another Veteran