Unemployment, earnings and enrollment among post 9/11 veterans

This paper examines three outcomes characterizing different aspects of post 9/11 veterans' economic reintegration to civilian life: unemployment, earnings and college enrollment, using Current Population Survey data from 2005 to 2011. Analyses include interactions of veteran status with sex, race/ethnicity and educational attainment to evaluate whether diverse veterans experience diverse consequences of service. In brief, I find that the basic unemployment differences between veterans and non-veterans often reported in the media understate the effect of military service on unemployment for men, since veterans have other characteristics that are associated with higher employment rates. Female veterans appear to suffer a steeper employment penalty than male veterans, but black veterans appear to suffer less of a penalty than white veterans. But on two other measures, earnings and college enrollment, veterans appear to be doing better than their civilian peers. Veterans with a high school education or less outearn their civilian peers, but veterans with at least some college education appear to lose some or all of the veteran earnings advantage compared to veterans with a high school degree, suggesting the greatest wage returns to military service accrue among the least educated. Veterans with at least a high school education are more likely to be enrolled in college than their civilian peers. Treating veterans as a monolithic block obscures differences in the consequences of military service across diverse groups.