Valley veterans share employment woes

Finding a job in 1971 after serving three years in Vietnam was very difficult, recalls Juan Olivas, a U.S. Navy veteran. Now, nearly 40 years later, many young veterans face a similar situation.

In 2009 the unemployment rate for young male veterans was more than double the overall national rate. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, male veterans ages 18 to 24 had an unemployment rate of 21.6 percent that year, compared to the national rate of 9.3 percent.

Of the 22.2 million veterans in 2009, one in 10 served in the military since September 2001. That group, which includes 24-year-old Senior Airman David Lee Elizondo, is known as Gulf War-era II veterans.

Elizondo joined the U.S. Air Force in July 2005. Honorably discharged earlier this year on March 25, he immediately began searching for a job.

“It was difficult at first,” Elizondo said about finding a job. “I applied at Wells Fargo, Foot Locker, Chase Bank, and no one wanted to hire me.”

The Houston native was often told he did not have enough experience or that his résumé didn’t meet the employer’s requirements. While in the service, Elizondo worked in the security forces, which he said was the equivalent of the U.S. Army’s military police.

Olivas remembers getting similar responses from prospective employers in 1971, when the national jobless rate was 5.9 percent.

“‘You’re too young. You’ve got the training but not the experience,’” Olivas recalls employers telling him. “You’d hear stuff like that, and it would really aggravate you, but they didn’t care. It took me a good year to find a job.”

He eventually found work putting up displays at the Montgomery Ward department store in Pharr.

“I wasn’t even doing what I had studied for or what I learned in the military,” said Olivas, who has a certificate in warehouse shipping and receiving. Currently self-employed, he speculated the certificate is now collecting dust at home.

Fellow Vietnam veteran Richard Peña said it took him almost a year to find work after leaving the Army in 1980.

The national unemployment rate at that time was 7.1 percent. Peña said he often washed cars and worked odd jobs to provide for his family.

“I would go apply here and there and let them know I was a veteran, but it didn’t matter. It was a hard time,” Peña said. “In my case, I didn’t want to file for unemployment (benefits). I was young and had too much pride.”

Elizondo, the 24-year-old veteran, said he considered filing for unemployment benefits but was fortunate enough to find a job two weeks ago, after starting school at the University of Texas-Pan American in May. He is now employed through a work-study program at the Veterans Services Center, where veterans are certified to receive their education benefits.

Elizondo’s boss, UTPA Veterans Manager Noel A. Ysasi, said many veterans find it difficult to compile a résumé that translates their military experience into the type of experience sought by non-military employers.

“The problem is, when you get out of the military you have great experience, but a lot of the skills may not be transferable, and to be able to find an occupation similar to what you were doing in the military is very difficult,” Ysasi said.

Many veterans are using their education benefits and enrolling in school, he noted.

“These individuals will be paid for housing, tuition, fees, and books,” he said. “They receive a lot of benefits which they are entitled to. They’ve earned it.”

UTPA enrolls an average of 400 veterans per semester, as does the University of Texas-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College. However, the schools have been told those numbers will double within the next year when as many as 5,000 veterans return from active duty, Ysasi said. He also noted that the Rio Grande Valley has a large segment of the population serving in the armed forces relative to other regions.

According to Emilio De Los Santos, director of the Hidalgo County Veterans Service Department, there are 1.7 million veterans in Texas and over 63,000 are active job-seekers. Of the 1.7 million, anywhere from 45,000 to 50,000 reside in Hidalgo County, where the unemployment rate was 11.1 percent as of April.

However, De Los Santos said Texas leads the nation in helping veterans find employment.

“Based on the economy, Texas does extremely well over other states in finding jobs for veterans,” he said. “In 2009, over 90 representatives from the Texas Veterans Commission helped 47,500 veterans find jobs.”

Naxiely Lopez covers PSJA and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4434.