Requests Related to Veterans’ Readjustment Benefits
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HVAC Economic Opportunity Subcommittee Hearing (April 30, 2019)
Economic opportunity is integral to the adjustment from military to civilian life. Although the unemployment rate of veterans is at its lowest since 2000, it still reflects a tragic under-employment of qualified individuals in possession of the most advanced professional training available in the world. The federal law establishing an obligation for DoL to track veteran employment data is VEVRAA, 38 U.S.C. §4212, a civil rights statute that tragically and unnecessarily excludes 4.2 million peacetime vets without a service connected disability.
DoL’s Veteran Employment & Training Service Federal Contractor Reporting form, VETS-4212, only tracks “protected veterans” - there exists no federally mandated employment data reporting for 20% of the overall veteran population.
There is some information about this veteran cohort, though what's available suggests that the veterans excluded from VEVRAA need its protections the most. According to "Key Statistics by Veteran Status and Period of Service,” a demographic snapshot titled published by the National Center for Veterans Analysis & Statistics (NCVAS), peacetime veterans are 30% less likely to be employed than other post-Vietnam veterans. The snapshot also showed they had lower personal and household incomes than veterans on average. This is imperfect data, however, being self-reported via survey rather than collected by federal contractors.
Suggested Questions for Panelists
DoL’s VETS program does great work and veteran employment is improving, but civil rights statutes should not exclude members of a class based on involuntary criteria like deploying or being injured. We suggest the following questions for Mr. Shallenberger in particular;
Is your agency prohibited from inviting federal contractors to collect and report employment data for veterans not protected by VEVRAA? If not, will you work to amend the Federal Contractor Reporting Form, VETS-4212 to be more inclusive?
Your agency promotes the federal hiring preference for veterans on its website, but omits mention of Congress’ recreation of that policy for the private sector in 1972. Does anything prevent VETS from amplifying VEVRAA’s provisions to veterans (online and elsewhere), rather than focusing primarily on contractor-facing resources?
