According to a report released in late August by the White House, some 125,000 veterans and military spouses have landed jobs over the past year. While this news is welcome, that still leaves a high percentage of recent veterans and military spouses not finding work.
I have blogged previously on this site about other public and private programs that are aimed at helping vets, including vets with significant disabilities, and military spouses to find decent jobs. They include the VA Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Program, the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, the employment rights provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Hiring Our Heroes program.
I returned recently to the Hiring Our Heroes site and I was impressed by the way this program has taken off. Back in January of this year, a Chamber spokesperson wrote that the goal for this calendar year was to hold 100 hiring fairs for veterans and military spouses across the nation. In the upcoming months of September and October alone, there are 71 hiring fairs scheduled in 34 different states.
Hiring Our Heroes has a few military spouse hiring events coming up right on big military bases, too. The first is on October 11 at Camp Pendleton, CA, and then on October 23 at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, FL. Be sure to check our their website for other upcoming hiring fairs taking place across the country.
In partnership with military.com, Hiring Our Heroes also has held three “Virtual Career Fair” days, so it’s important to check back with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring Our Heroes site frequently to learn when you can attend a virtual hiring fair from anywhere on the planet.
Of course, the Chamber has been helped in achieving great success with this veterans hiring effort because of sponsorships from companies like GM, Caterpillar and Toyota. It’s good business for such companies but it would be great to see more major U.S. corporations come up with programs and funding to assist the backbone of this nation—our veterans, their dependents and survivors.
Freedom isn’t free, and nobody knows that better than our veterans and the organizations that advocate for them and their loved ones.
Terry Moakley
Chair of the VetsFirst Committee
Related Posts:
Jobs for Veterans and Family Members with the Federal Government