Military spouses still face high unemployment, despite years of advocacy and policy efforts
Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton I want to hear directly from you as somebody who’s on the front lines of this issue. What is the current state of military spouse employment, and why is it still such a persistent issue for us?
Sue Hoppin It’s so frustrating because there have been so many efforts, as you well know from your background, there have been so many efforts on the public and the private sector fronts. And it just stubbornly stays around the 20% mark. And I think a lot of it is, we have a lot of contributing factors that we have just not addressed. We’re not granular enough in the data that we’re collecting. So we don’t really know why military spouses choose not to participate fully in the employment arena. Unlike veteran unemployment, which you had a huge part in playing in terms of bringing down the veteran unemployment, the issues are very different. I think people are very, they’re very tempted to throw veteran unemployment together with military spouse unemployment, maybe not understanding that they’re very different, you’re nodding your head because you get it. But veterans are not subject to directed moves anymore. They can actually settle down, they can find a job, and they can stay there past three years. The military spouses are still subject to directed moves. That means within 18 months or three years, they’re moving again. So the military spouse who was gainfully employed when you surveyed military spouses on unemployment may, by the time you’re surveying them again, be unemployed. And it’s a constantly moving target, because until they transition out of the military life, they are going to be constantly employed, unemployed, employed, and unemployed at different times. And so I think we’re asking the wrong questions. So one, I don’t think the data is doing us any favors. I don’t think we’re specific enough in the data that we’re collecting, we’re not really addressing the military spouse experience and motivations about why they work or why they don’t work. So we don’t understand enough of that. And I include ourselves in that. We just don’t know. And then we also have other issues, such as food insecurity, that requires them to maybe just get a job as opposed to pursuing a career, because they hit an installation and they may just really need to get the first job they can get, pay the bills. And so they don’t have the luxury of looking for a long-term career opportunity. And then we have inability to access quality child care at a reasonable rate. That’s just like in the civilian workforce, that’s a really big issue for military spouses. And then you have the other barriers, which I think we’re doing better on the employment, on the employer front. I think there are less misunderstandings with the employers because we now understand that people are not staying at a job for 20 years anymore. So as people are moving jobs every two to four years, that makes the military spouse look almost stable. Because when we land on a job at an installation, we’re not looking for our next job at that installation, we’re looking to do the best job we can while we’re there. And it may be longer than three years, but we still have legislation that’s not terribly supportive of military spouses. We also do not have any incentive for employers to hire military spouses. Any incentive that exists for employers to hire military spouses exists because someone internal has decided that they want to do it, but they’re not being directed by the government or there’s no tax incentive to hire a military spouses yet. And so I think it’s all those things add to make the percentage stay at about 20%.
Terry Gerton That’s fascinating background and really helpful to give us a picture of what’s going on with this really important community. And I just want to add, I think another key piece to this is that it still takes two incomes to keep a military family healthy. We used to think that the spouse didn’t need to work, that the military member was enough, but even these days, it really does require a two-income foundation, right?
Sue Hoppin 100%,and I think the frustration among many military spouses is that many of our benefit structures are based on the 1950s model of a military family, where you have a trailing spouse that may go work outside the home for some extra money, maybe around the holidays or if they need some extra funds, but that’s not the case anymore. I mean, military families are no different than anyone else. You really need two incomes to begin to develop that financial stability, that financial security that we promote. And it’s no longer the case where we have the luxury of just the spouse staying home and the service member salary being enough, especially now when we have situations when we might have government shutdowns, where we had promoted for so long, the government as the employer of choice for military spouses. So if we have a government shutdown, what happens when the service member is not getting paid and the spouse now is employed by the government and they’re not getting payed? They have a double whammy now.
Terry Gerton It’s a really tricky situation that we find ourselves in. I’m speaking with Sue Hoppin. She’s the founder and president of the National Military Spouse Network. Sue, you’ve been in this space 10 years. Are there avenues where you’re seeing progress, either statutorily or through policy or practice?
Sue Hoppin We are, and you’re being very kind, I’m going to age myself and say that I’ve actually been in this space for 30 years. And I’m kind of a one-trick pony, like this is all I know, and so I’ve been tracking it. As an example, we’ve been checking the Military Spouse Hiring Act to the WOTC expansion for military spouses. That has been around since 2004, when Judge Carter out of Texas contacted us when I was working in a military non-profit. His staff had this great idea and we were like, that is fantastic, yes, military spouses should be added to the Work Opportunity Tax Credit to incentivize employers to hire them. And to me, that is the measure of how well we’re doing, because it started in 2004. We resurrected it in 2019 with our recommendation, our first white paper. And then we were able to gain so much momentum in the 118th Congress, bipartisan, universally popular. And then it kind of just died on the vine because there was no vehicle to move it, because there was unwillingness to bring it up for a vote. And so then we have to find a vehicle to move the legislation. And the good news, bad news is that WOTC is set to expire this year in December 2025, all of WOTC. And that is actually a great time to open it up, expand it, insert military spouses as another target work group, and then maybe get it past them when they expand the WOTC. And so we just don’t know in this environment, is there going to be an appetite for that? Is anyone really going to champion it? Congressman Beyer has been a fantastic champion, and before him, Congressman Antonio Delgado, who was on board early on before he went to go be the lieutenant governor of New York. But we just can’t bring it across the finish line. And when you think about it’s been around since 2004, that’s a long two decades. It just feels like that’s the situation we’re in all the time, where every time we take a step forward, we take a couple steps back, and we just never recover. I think, in the past 10 years, 15 years, we’ve done great work, in that joining forces under the Obama administration did a really great job of raising awareness from businesses and organizations and agencies around the value of hiring military spouses. And that really served to bring more people to the table. It was kind of like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval, like you should hire military spouses, this is a talented workforce, this is a great pipeline for you. So that did great. And then more recently, two years ago, we had the Domestic Employees Teleworking Overseas Program, the DETO, which was a program that worked so well because we found that, hey, military spouses are doing great things for government agencies here within the United States, why shouldn’t they keep their jobs when they’re overseas if their agency is willing to retain them and they can telework? And then under the last administration, there was an MOA signed between the Department of, at the time, Defense, and Department of State that would allow them to ease and to help facilitate those arrangements. So that was amazing. And that was the military spouses that advocated for that and made that happen. And I was at the White House when they did that signing. That was so exciting. Then the new DoD’s Military Spouse Career Accelerator Program, which provides paid 12-week fellowships in industry, that’s going to be codified and that’ll come back in January of next year. And that’ll provide opportunities. So there are wins. I mean, I don’t want to be negative Nancy, there are some wins.
Terry Gerton Well, those are real bright spots and that’s great to hear. Speaking of bright spots, you all are sponsoring a career summit this week. Tell us more about that.
Sue Hoppin Oh, we are. We started yesterday with our first two sessions. So we had a really strong start, but we have sessions every day this week, two sessions a day, one at 10 a.m. and one at 6 p.m., except for Wednesday, where we’ll have an in-person event in the Arlington area. And that panel is entitled Weathering the Storm: Strategies for Career Stability in Uncertain Times. And we’ll have a panel of someone from corporate talking about how you can PCS-proof your career as you move. And then someone who works with employers and spouses to talk about how to make themselves more employer friendly, how to make themselves more marketable, and then a career coach to teach them a little bit more about building resilience in these tough times. But it’s absolutely free, so people can just go on our website at nationalmilitaryspousenetwork.org. They can register and they can catch it on demand if it’s not convenient, but if they want to ask the speakers questions and if they want to participate in the discussion, they’ll want to join in live. And then if you’re in the D.C. area, join us for our networking event. There is a price associated with that, but it includes refreshments. So we hope you’ll join us. We’ll see you there, Terry.
Terry Gerton Well, we’ll see if the calendar allows. So just as we wrap up, Sue, if you could have anything at the top of your wishlist, what would that be, whether it’s policy, statute, awareness, engagement?
Sue Hoppin Sure, top of my wish list. Can I have three things? So I think we need to take a more holistic approach to military spouse unemployment, and we need get a way to develop some papers and understand that the solutions that work for veteran unemployment may not necessarily port over to military spouse unemployment. We also need to stop using our military and our military families as political pawns. These are real people with real ramifications. People rely on their incomes, and these are military families who are still willing to give their all in support of our country, but may be food insecure. I could go on, but we just need to stop with that. And the other is just any kind of support we give on Capitol Hill. If we could just resurrect that Military Spouse Hiring Act and expand the WOTC to include military spouses, that would be a huge win for everybody.The post Military spouses still face high unemployment, despite years of advocacy and policy efforts first appeared on Federal News Network.
