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Veterans on the job market

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Young American soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan face another battle here at home. They’re trying to find work, at a time when unemployment is just under 10 percent. Many of these veterans and reservists say they’d settle for just about anything that pays. Reporter Kirk Carapezza went to Fort McCoy (flickr image courtesy of markellis_1964) in southwestern Wisconsin to catch up with some of those who are about to start the difficult hunt for a job.

• Fort McCoy
• Veterans’ Employment & Training Service (DOL)

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MARCO WERMAN:  Young American soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan face another battle here at home.  They’re trying to find work at a time when unemployment is just under ten percent.  Many of these veterans and reservists say they’d settle for just about anything that pays.  Kurt Carapezza caught up with some of those who are about to start the difficult hunt for a job.

KURT CARAPEZZA:  At Fort McCoy in southwester Wisconsin, more than 300 soldiers filed pat the barbed wire perimeter and enter the military headquarters building.  Fresh from duty in Iraq, the soldiers of the 32nd Infantry Brigade Unit are sunburned and tired.  They’ll stay here at the sprawling military training center for five days, demobilizing.  That involves sitting through seemingly endless briefings covering everything from marriage counseling to coping with stress disorders.

RICK LARSON:  And as you know with the economy, it’s hard out there.  So I’m not going to try to blow smoke.

CARAPEZZA: Rick Larson is a retired Army Officer.  He leads the briefing on finding work.

LARSON:  How many people here will be looking for jobs when they go back to their home?

CARAPEZZA: About half the soldiers raise their hands including 24-year-old Sergeant Lee Jones.  Jones was a high school senior when the war in Iraq began.  Over the last four years he’s been deployed three times.  Working his way up to Special Operations in the Army National Guard and Reserves.  He says his time in the service has taught him about leadership and discipline, but coming home and looking for work is like having been stuck on a deserted island.

SERGEANT LEE JONES:  Everyone’s moved on, but you seem to have been in the same place the entire time.

CARAPEZZA: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says in 2009 veterans 24 years old and younger had an unemployment rate of roughly 27%.  About 10% higher than civilians of the same age group.  Ken Grant with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development says it’s party because some employers simply won’t hire a veteran.

KEN GRANT:   Let’s face it, you know having the guard and reserve soldiers on multiple deployments and then taking them away from that employer, that does hurt them.

CARAPEZZA: Grant says even when young vets do get jobs; many of them find their positions difficult to keep in this economy.

GRANT:  The younger person is the first one to let go from a factor or a closing.  They don’t have the experience or the seniority, so they would be the first ones out the door.  We’re a heavy manufacturing state, such as the auto industry, these employers have closed their doors.

CARAPEZZA: Making it difficult for young veterans and reservists like Raymond Lynch.  The 23-year-old signed up for the Army in 2003, has been deployed to Baghdad two times since then, and was laid off from a landscaping job last year, three months before his most recent deployment.

RAYMOND LYNCH:  They usually lay off anyways in the winter.  But they had to do it a couple of months short, a lot more guys, just because there wasn’t much money coming in for landscaping because of the economy.

CARAPEZZA: Lynch says he’s planning to ride out the recession by going back to school, though he’s not sure for what.

LYNCH:  At one time I wanted to be a teacher.  One time I wanted to be a psychologist.  Now I don’t know.

CARAPEZZA: During a short break in the briefings at Fort McCoy, Sergeant Lee Jones listens as another veteran’s representative talks about finding a job.

MALE VOICE 1:  The process can be as simple s you get referred to a job, you go down, you interview, you kill the interview, you’re ready to go.  Or, it can be more time consuming and we need to more things to make you job ready.

CARAPEZZA: Jones says he’s like a law enforcement or security job.  Something, he says, that has a rigid structure outside the barbed wire.  But Jones says he’s getting married in the spring and will take any job he can find.

JONES: I would like to be somewhere where it’s a self-worth job, not a job where I feel stuck and right now with getting married and everything, it’s crucial to have paycheck.

CARAPEZZA: To help these young veterans to adjust and find that elusive paycheck in a jobless recovery, labor officials say they’re planning additional job fairs specifically targeting veterans late this year.  For The World, I’m Kurt Carapezza, Madison, Wisconsin.

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