International Journal of Business, Management and Commerce (IJBMC)

Literature supports the idea that military veterans have faced higher unemployment rates in the civilian workforce compared to the general population since World War II. There are approximately 200,000 individuals phasing out of the military each year; about eighty percent separating after a certain number of years and the remaining twenty percent retiring from a branch of the military. The primary objective of this paper is to present factors that contribute to employment rates among veterans and how hiring veterans adds value to civilian organizations. For the purposes of this study a mixed methods approach to gain the best understanding of veteran underutilization within the civilian workforce using publicly available online resources. The qualitative research focused on the resumes of five veterans, while the quantitative research analyzed the unemployment rates for veterans and the civilian workforce each year from 1948 to 2016.