By Matt Roy
Twitter: @AzNewsmedia

One national organization is working to help military veterans and their families in Arizona.

The group will host a special job fair for vets and their spouses Thursday in Glendale, stepping up efforts to address the unique needs of those who’ve nobly served their country.

Disabled American Veterans and RecruitMilitary will host the Phoenix Veterans Job Fair 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 6 at State Farm Stadium, 1 Cardinals Drive, Glendale.

The free event is aimed at veterans, military spouses, transitioning military, National Guard members and reservists, as well as the dozens of companies eager to hire them.

Chris Stevens – who retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1999 before joining Bradley-Morris Inc. and RecruitMilitary, where he is a senior vice president – said in the decades since, the group has helped many thousands of veterans find gainful work, he said.

“We have over 400 military veterans and spouses that are already pre-registered, so it’s going to be an outstanding event,” Mr. Stevens said. “Right now, we have 63 companies coming in. It’s a great turnout.”

Highlighting a few of the local and national participating groups, he mentioned Lockheed-Martin, Honeywell, Arizona State University, Bill Luke Chrysler, Cummings, the FBI, among others.

“We’ve got some really, really good companies coming in there,” he added.

“It’s a really good opportunity, not only for military veterans, but spouses alike,” Mr. Stevens said. “We’re making a concerted effort to try and help military spouses. For the military veteran, the unemployment rate is below 3%, the lowest it’s been in the history of the United States.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate for vets dropped to 2.9% as compared to the historically low rate of 3.4% for non-military reported as of December 2019.

“This is the 16th consecutive month when the veteran unemployment rate was lower than the non-veteran unemployment rate,” agency officials stated at dol.gov. “Additionally, the veteran unemployment rate for the calendar year of 2019 was 3.1%, which is the lowest annual veteran unemployment rate since 2000. This is a decline from last year’s veteran unemployment rate of 3.5%.”

The unemployment rate for veterans peaked nearly a decade ago in the midst of the Great Recession, when it rose to 9.2% in August 2010.

But while the picture for ex-military job seekers may be far rosier these days, their spouses and family members still face significant challenges, Mr. Stevens said.

“There are over 600,000 active duty military spouses and their unemployment rate is right around 24%,” he said.

The reason for the disparity is, he explained, that while every active duty military person — regardless of how often they move around to bases in the U.S. and abroad — already has a job when they get there. Their spouses, by contrast, must contend with the residential instability typical of active duty families.

“When a military member moves to a new duty station, the next day they go to work. Unfortunately, the spouse can’t,” Mr. Stevens said. “But if a military spouse at a previous military installation is working, they’ve got to move now and it’s like starting over all the time.”

By way of example, he said during his 20 years in the Air Force, which culminated in a role as an F-16 mechanic crew chief for Thunderbirds Air Demonstration Squadron, he moved at least seven times.

Now, his group has prioritized services to assist the families of those who serve.

“We’ve set up a program here called Team Transition, the team being the family and the military veteran,” Mr. Stevens said. “We’ve been doing since about a year ago, once we realized this high unemployment rate for spouses.”

Beyond job fairs like this week’s in Glendale and others held year-round across the country, Mr. Stevens said his organization hosts an online jobs board at recruitmilitary.com.

At the site, job seekers can enter skill-set keywords and cross-reference opportunities in specific communities.

For instance, a quick search of the term “mechanic” turned up nearly four dozen current job listings in Phoenix, with nearly 90 additional listings in other communities across the Valley.

In addition to job postings, the site offers a variety of other resources for post-military job seekers and military spouses, including resume prep information, interviewing advice and networking. Downloadable materials are supplemented with online webinars.