Strategies to Connect Veterans to Employment

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This Veterans Day, Workforce System Strategies summarizes studies that explore employment strategies for veterans! The first provides a synthesis of veterans’ access to multiple workforce development programs and presents veteran employment outcomes compared to non-veterans. The second explains how to best use work readiness when identifying job opportunities for veterans. The last report focuses on military occupational specialties and their civilian occupation counterparts.

Veterans in Workforce Development: Participation and Labor Market Outcomes. 2017. This report compares the employment status and earnings of veterans and nonveterans who participated in workforce development programs in Washington State between 2002 and 2012. The analysis suggests that “9 percent of people who used WIA Adult and Labor Exchange were veterans.” Using propensity score matching to identify the nonveteran workforce development customers most like veteran customers, the authors found “high participation in veteran-specific programs” and that “in all cases, veterans were much less likely than nonveterans to be employed within 6 months or a year after program exit.” However, “basic results suggest that employed veterans experience higher earnings than nonveterans at both six months and one year after program exit.”

Workforce Readiness Alignment: The Relationship Between Job Preferences, Retention, and Earnings. 2016. This resource analyzes 2014 Veterans Job Retention Survey data to help understand the relationship between transitioning service members, veteran job seekers, and the labor force. The survey provides recommendations for employers and job seekers that may improve retention and employment outcomes for this population, such as:

“Adopt an individualized approach to hiring transitioning military and veterans;
Take time to understand each employee’s personal and professional goals”;
“Enable a customized plan to help individual employees succeed in the workplace”; and
“Utilize mentorship and peer mentoring programs that can help veteran employees learn about opportunities within a company that will best align with their skillsets”.

Helping Soldiers Leverage Army Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities in Civilian Jobs. 2017. This report assesses the level of the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to perform in Army military occupational specialties (MOS) to develop improved crosswalks to civilian occupations. Moreover, it provides high-quality civilian occupation matches for ten popular MOSs. The report offers recommendations to improve the transition process for soldiers leaving the Army. For instance, “provide information on the…types of employers they should target”; “develop a communication plan for employers in these occupations, identifying which MOSs are good matches”; “provide information to employers about the number of soldiers in these MOSs…and their planned geographic locations.”

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Content Details

Topics:

Reemployment - General Earnings and Benefits Data Employment/Unemployment/Labor Force Data Industry/Occupation Data Outcomes

Target Populations:

Military/Spouses Veterans/Spouses

Programs:

Multiple Mixed Funding Streams

Geographic Locations:

Washington National Scope

Industry Sectors:

Cross-Industry

Last Updated:
Created:
Posted by: Laura Aron
Posted in: Workforce System Strategies