Friday, March 22, 2013

Unemployment Among Female Veterans

I'm looking into data on veterans today, and came across a piece of information that seems to be absent from most of mainstream reporting.  The media frequently notes that the unemployment rate for Gulf War II veterans plummetted between 2011 and 2012, falling from 12.1% to 9.9%--still too high, but a stunning decrease in my view given the stickiness of unemployment overall these last 4 years.  However: the unemployment rate for female veterans actually increased, from 12.4% to 12.5%  according to the BLS.  While yes, men still make up the vast majority of the veteran population, this statistic is troubling for a number of reasons:
  • The unemployment rate for women was significantly higher for women than for men in both 2011 (+0.4%) and 2012 (+3.0%);
  • Female veterans are being left behind in the veterans jobs recovery;
  • This represents 37,000 women across the country. 
The BLS table does not show margins of error, and it's possible that the sample of women is small enough that the data is simply noisy.  I wonder what occupations are driving this change, and this disparity.