UPDATE: Here is the survey link I promised. If you are a Guard or Reserve member currently unemployed, or your spouse who is a Guard or Reserve member is, please take my survey.

Next month will mark one year that my husband has been without a full time job. His position was eliminated by his employer six months after he got back from his deployment to Iraq.

His position was never filled while he was gone and apparently the employer decided they didn’t need his position after all. They of course cited budget cuts, which is just about the only reason you can use when laying off a service member.

For the first six months he was job searching, we kept his reserve status on his resume. After all, military experience looks good to prospective employers, right? That’s what we thought anyway.

But after six months of not one phone call or email, let alone an interview request, we began to think otherwise. I began searching for information. There seemed to be plenty of organizations and companies looking for veterans – but what about veterans who still serve? For those Reserve and Guard members who have served in a war zone and returned, continuing on with their weekend drills and occasional trainings, employment is getting a lot harder to come by.

In a way, it’s hard to blame the employer. Of course they want their employees to stick around and legally, they’re not allowed to discriminate against Reserve or Guard members when it comes to hiring. But if you have two resumes before you with equal skills and equal experience and one is a reservist or guard member and the other isn’t – which would you choose? And no one could ever prove your choice was based on a concern that one applicant might have to leave for an extended amount of time.

I actually called someone in the Department of Labor last fall and asked him if there were any incentives out there for employers to hire currently serving Reserve or Guard members. The only thing he could think of was a tax incentive of $1600 for an employer who hired a member of the military but it came with a stipulation. The service member had to be on food stamps for at least six months before getting hired. Oh, and the same tax incentive also applied to ex-convicts.

Okay, all of this to say that I am working on an article about this very issue for Military Spouse Magazine and I need your help! I don’t know how many studies have been done so far on this issue, but since I haven’t been able to find much, I would like to hear from as many of you as possible. If you are a Guard or Reserve member (or the spouse of one) and you are currently unemployed, or you have dealt with unemployment issues recently, please contact me (sara at sarahorn.com) and share with me your family’s story. I may use it for my article, and who knows – if we get enough of them, maybe we’ll just take them to Washington.

It is past time that something was done!

Send me your story or your thoughts on this issue by June 10. Also, check back in a couple of days for a survey I hope to have posted that you can participate in. Please spread the word!

Related posts:

  1. Reserve/Guard and Small Business
  2. Guard and Reserve Benefits – Let’s Talk!
  3. National Guard Continues to Attract Recruits
  4. What Happens When Guard and Reserve Members Come Home
  5. Army Tackles Individual Ready Reserve Problem