Veterans’ jobless rate falls but remains high, By Gregg Zoroya, January 6, 2013, USA Today: “Soaring unemployment that has bedeviled Iraq- and Afghanistan-era veterans for five years has finally reversed. The jobless rate dropped to an annual average of 9.9% last year from 12.1% in 2011, labor statistics show. ‘It looks like it peaked in 2011 and has since been coming down,’ says James Borbely, an economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics who studies veteran data. ‘We’re looking at a rate that has clearly improved.’ Veteran advocates caution that joblessness among this group remains stubbornly high — well above the national unemployment rate of 7.8%. About 205,000 of those who served in or during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are without work…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty