Report Finds Nearly One-Third of Veteran Job
Seekers are Underemployed
ZipRecruiter, the fastest-growing online employment marketplace,
and the Call of Duty™ Endowment (“the Endowment”), a nonprofit
foundation that has helped more than 40,000 veterans find
high-quality employment, today announced the release of a national
report examining the current state of U.S. veteran employment
activity. Pulling from the tens of millions of active jobseekers on
the ZipRecruiter platform, co-authors Cathy Barrera (ZipRecruiter
chief economist) and Phillip Carter (Endowment adviser and veterans
policy expert) analyzed the resume data of more than six million
job seekers (547,941 of whom were veterans), and found that veteran
job seekers are still struggling to find meaningful employment
after service – with nearly one-third experiencing what they
defined as “underemployment,” or employment below their
objective skill level. This is despite the fact that the most
commonly referenced economic indicator – namely, the unemployment
rate released each month by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics –
shows veterans as doing better than non-veterans in the job
market.
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“Existing public data on veteran employment lacks the granular
information stakeholders and policy makers need to effectively help
veterans transition to the civilian workforce,” said Cathy Barrera,
labor economist and former Cornell professor. “With this study, we
wanted to provide a deeper and more nuanced look at the actual,
on-the-ground experience of today’s veteran job seekers, in an
effort to help better inform and direct veteran programs and
investment decisions.”
As veterans comprise 8.3 percent of the U.S. adult population
and 6.4 percent of the civilian labor force, the organizations
wanted to quantitatively assess anecdotal evidence that many
veterans are struggling to find employment and/or face
underemployment challenges following their service. By leveraging
the aforementioned resume data, Barrera and Carter set out to
identify areas where veterans were significantly different from
non-veterans with respect to their education, employment,
geography, and job search activity. Key findings include:
- Underemployment affects more veteran
job seekers than non-veteran job seekers. Nearly one-third of
veteran job seekers are underemployed – a rate 15.6 percent higher
than non-veteran job seekers.
- Veterans tend to leave their first
jobs after military service faster than non-veterans leave their
first jobs, but veteran turnover is lower throughout the arc of a
veteran’s career. This may indicate that immediately following
military service, veterans take the first job available, rather
than finding a “best fit” role. However, across their entire
careers, veterans stay longer at their jobs – with 57 percent of
veteran job seekers staying at their jobs longer than 2.5 years,
compared to 42.5 percent of non-veterans.
- Veterans searching for jobs are more
likely to be employed during their search than non-veterans, and
are more likely to change jobs in the next 6 months than
non-veterans. More than half of veteran job seekers (54.2
percent) said they were either “very likely” or “somewhat likely”
to change jobs in the next 6 months, compared to 43.9 percent of
non-veterans.
“Underemployment appears to disproportionately affect veterans,
impeding their economic success after military service,” said
Carter, a former U.S. Army officer who now directs the Military,
Veterans and Society program at the Center for a New American
Security (CNAS), teaches law at Georgetown University, and is an
adviser to the Endowment. “However, current government statistics
barely notice the underemployment phenomenon, and do not begin to
constructively address it through improved training, job search and
network programs, among other approaches.”
For additional insight on how veterans serve as assets to the
U.S. workforce, the two teams also surveyed 54,000 job seekers
within the ZipRecruiter platform (5,410 of whom were veterans)
regarding their sentiments towards employment and their job search,
as well as 2,225 employers (247 of whom were veterans) regarding
their perceptions of veteran employees. Key findings include:
- A majority of employers report that
veterans perform “better than” or “much better than”
non-veterans. Employers are more likely to view veterans
as a positive asset to their companies compared to their
non-veteran peers. 59.1 percent of employers reported that veterans
perform “better than” or “much better than” their non-veteran
peers, with 37.5 percent saying they performed “about the same” as
their non-veteran peers. Additionally, a slightly higher rate of
satisfaction with veteran job performance was reported by employers
with a formal veterans hiring program – with 66.9 percent saying
their vets performed “better than” or “much better than” non-vets,
compared to 55.9 percent of employers without a formal vets
program.
- Among respondents surveyed in the
employer category, those who were veterans were significantly more
likely to report the presence of a “vets program” at their firm
than non-veterans. 46 percent of veterans questioned under the
employer survey said their firms had a vets program, compared to
just 17 percent of non-veterans.
- Experience, perseverance, leadership
and directly-relevant skills top the list of desirable qualities
that employers find attractive in veterans. Roughly one-fifth
of employers ranked “experience” as one of their top factors for
the attractiveness of veteran hires, followed closely by
“perseverance and/or work ethic.” Approximately one-sixth of
employers ranked leadership or relevant skills as one of their top
three factors for new hires.
As two organizations both dedicated to helping Americans and
veterans find meaningful work, ZipRecruiter and the Endowment
partnered to conduct this report with the goal of generating
awareness around the unique challenges faced by today’s veteran job
seekers, in addition to the value they bring to the U.S.
workforce.
“Unfortunately, government employment numbers don’t account for
veterans who are underemployed or those who have stopped looking
for work altogether,” said Dan Goldenberg, the Endowment’s
Executive Director. “The government statistics make determinations
about individuals’ employment status by relying on data from one
question the Census asks each month: ‘Did you do any work for pay
last week?’ Under that standard, mowing your neighbor’s lawn for
$20 gets you counted as employed. We need more relevant and better
quality data on the economic health of our veterans. This new
study—thanks to ZipRecruiter’s partnership—is one of the largest of
its kind and a great first step on that path.”
The full report – Challenges On the Home Front:
Underemployment Hits Veterans Hard – which includes additional
findings, graphics and the methodology, can be found at:
http://www.callofdutyendowment.org/vetdata
About ZipRecruiter:
ZipRecruiter is the fastest growing employment marketplace. We
have helped over 1 million businesses and 100 million job seekers
find their next perfect match through partnerships with the best
job boards on the web, curated email alerts, award-winning mobile
apps, and one of the most sophisticated job search algorithms in
the space.
About the Call of Duty Endowment:
The Call of Duty Endowment is a non-profit, private foundation
co-founded by Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. The
Endowment helps veterans find high quality careers by supporting
groups that prepare them for the job market and by raising
awareness of the value vets bring to the workplace. For more
information about the Call of Duty Endowment, please visit
www.callofdutyendowment.org. ACTIVISION and CALL OF DUTY are
trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. All other trademarks and
trade names are the properties of their respective owners.
About Cathy Barrera (Co-Author): Cathy Barrera is the
chief economist at the jobs site ZipRecruiter, where she serves as
the team’s lead authority on U.S. unemployment, labor and job
market issues – especially as they pertain to ZipRecruiter’s core
customer base of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). An
accomplished labor economist, Barrera’s passion lies in exploring
how developments in technology are reshaping the economy and the
way we work. Her background also includes her role as Assistant
Professor of Economics at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School
of Management at Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, where she
researched the impact of technology on the labor market. Barrera
received her PhD in business economics from Harvard University, and
an MSc in applicable mathematics from the London School of
Economics.
Phillip Carter (Co-Author): Phillip Carter is Senior
Fellow and Counsel at the Center for a New American Security
(CNAS), where he directs the CNAS research program on the Military,
Veterans & Society. His research focuses on issues facing
veterans and military personnel, force structure and readiness
issues, and civil-military relations. Carter also currently teaches
as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University. Prior to
joining CNAS, he managed Caerus Associates as the firm's chief
operating officer, served in the Pentagon as the Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense, and practiced government contracts and
national security law. Previously, Carter served nine years in the
Army in military police, civil affairs and infantry units,
including duty in the Republic of Korea, Iraq, and in the United
States. He writes extensively on veterans and military issues, and
serves on various boards and advisory councils in the veterans and
military community.
View source
version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171109005412/en/
For ZIP Recruiter:Beck Mediaziprecruiter@beckmedia.comorFor Call
of Duty Endowment:Joy Phillipsjphillips@rubenstein.com
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