Sunday, March 14, 2010

Unemployment rate at 21.1% for young Iraq and Afghanistan war combat veterans

A recent Associated Press article reveals that the unemployment rate last year among young veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was at 21.1 percent. This according to a U.S. Labor Department report released last Friday which indicates tough employment difficulties that combat veterans face as they make the transition home from war.

The number was well above the 16.6 percent jobless rate for non-veterans of the same ages, 18 to 24. The 2010 figure was much higher than the 2008 unemployment rate of 14.1 percent among veterans in that same age group.

Joseph Sharpe, director of the economic division at the American Legion said that many of the unemployed combat veterans are members of the National Guard and reserves who have deployed multiple times. Sharpe said many have come home to find their jobs had been eliminated because of companies downsizing their workforce all across the nation. 


He also noted that other companies might not want to hire a veteran who might deploy again or will have many medical appointments because of war-related health problems.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks Republicans for blocking every jobs bill you can in congress.

    More proof that your party hates combat veterans as well as middle-class Americans.

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  2. Republicans are the multi-national corporations best friends.

    They gave $ 100's of Billions in tax breaks from 1994 thru 2006 to these Benedict Arnold corporations could close American manufacturing jobs down and ship them to China.

    These corps don't even pay any taxes, we protect their shipping lanes with the navy, enforce trade agreements with the army and marines, and they don't pay a dime of these costs, what a beautiful deal for them.

    So what if the middle class Americans get screwed, the multi-national corps just keep funneling campaign contributions to the Republicans to run campaigns on guns, gods, gays, and terrorism to gin up fear and dissent and other carnival tricks; to get voters focus off the real problem of multi-national corps selling out America with republicans as the willing whores to do it.

    ReplyDelete