Job stimulus proposals don’t get a lot of support these days even though there are 14 million people out of work and a jobless rate of 9.1 percent. But maybe people would think differently if they considered the men and women who sacrificed their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I don’t know if you heard, but 33,000 of them will be heading home in the next year and they’ll be heading into one of the worse job markets in decades, a job market that’s even crummier for them.

The unemployment rate for veterans of the Gulf War, including those who served from September 2001 until today, is now 12.1 percent, up from 10.6 percent in May of last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the numbers for younger male vets between ages 18 and 24 are even worse, about 21 percent joblessness; not to mention those coming home with injuries. About 25 percent of these veterans report having some sort of disability as a result of recent wars, much higher than the 13 percent among all veterans.

Thanks to medical advances, soldiers are able to survive devastating injuries that may have killed them in previous wars, experts say, and that’s creating a large pool of disabled vets looking for jobs once they return home. They are also struggling with hidden disabilities, such as traumatic brain injuries and mental health issues.

“Disabled vets have a lot of unique challenges, and they have a hard time finding jobs,” says Paul Rieckhoff, executive director with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

He estimates that the jobless rate among his 100,000 members is in the double digits, with no sign of relief.

Often times vets whether disabled or not, especially those who enlisted at a young age and have little private sector work experience, have a tough time adjusting to civilian life again and finding jobs. And vets who left jobs behind to go off to war sometimes come back and find their jobs are gone, even though there are laws that are supposed to fight against such actions.

President Obama’s announcement last night that thousands of vets will be returning home was good news for many people out there, but it could end up a recipe for disaster for the many more military men and women that will be returning home if they can’t find work. (more…)