Joblessness drops 4 percent for recent vets
Published: February 3, 2012
WASHINGTON — Veteran unemployment dropped across the board in January, with those who served in recent wars seeing the sharpest decline, down from 13.1 percent in December to 9.1 percent.
That represents the lowest jobless rate for post-9/11 veterans since December 2009.
Overall, 7.5 percent of former servicemembers are jobless, a small decrease from 7.7 percent in December.
The Obama administration has in recent months pushed a series of initiatives focusing on finding jobs for veterans fresh out of the service and on Thursday officials offered details of a new veterans job corps initiative to employ thousands of servicemembers as police officers, firefighters and park rangers.
Monthly figures released Friday by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics indicate that 127,000 more post-9/11 veterans were employed in January than in December, and 220,000 more than were employed in January 2011.
The overall U.S. unemployment rate in January hit a three-year low of 8.3 percent.
For more veterans employment coverage, visit our Get Hired section.
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