by Freddy Groves
Veteran unemployment isn’t as high as it used to be, down to 5.8 percent in 2015 from a high of 12.2 percent in 2011. It’s likely the Joining Forces program is at least partially responsible for that.
In 2011, first lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden challenged civilian companies to hire 100,000 veterans and their spouses in an employment and training launch. Companies responded by hiring or training more than 1 million. One year ago, that same initiative saw numerous companies pledging to hire 90,000 veterans in the technology and energy fields over the next five years.
Fast-forward to now: Forty companies participating in a renewal of the program have committed to hiring 110,000 veterans and to training 60,000 veterans and their spouses in the next five years, mostly in technology, aerospace and telecommunications.
Let’s see where some of those jobs are:
JP Morgan Chase will hire 1,000 veterans over five years. It’s going to commit to spending $13.8 million through 2020 to support the Institute for Veterans and Military Families. Since 2011 they’ve helped 2,400 earn information-technology certificates.
Amazon has hired 10,000 veterans and their spouses since 2013 and is committing to hiring 25,000 more in the next five years. In addition, it will train another 10,000 in cloud computing.
The aerospace industry (including General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and Boeing) will hire 30,000 veterans in total. The big phone companies (T-Mobile and Verizon, AT&T and Sprint) will hire 25,000 more.
Accenture and USAA will hire 5,000 each. Dell, Tesla, GoDaddy, Intuit, Seagate and Hewlett-Packard also will hire. Multiple companies will provide training and certification.
Get your resume ready. For the full list of hiring companies, go online to whitehouse.gov and look for the press release dated May 5, 2016. To read the full reports and keep track of new ones as they come in, check www.va.gov/oig.
(c) 2016 King Features Synd. Inc.
