by James A. Bacon

Unemployment among veterans in the United States is higher than that for the population at large. The problem is particularly acute among post 9/11 veterans, for whom the unemployment rate ran 9.0% in 2013 — nearly 50% higher than the 6.2% rate for all Americans, according to data from the U.S. Congress’ Joint Economic Commitee.

The silver lining for Virginians is that the unemployment rate for young vets in the Old Dominion was actually lower than the statewide average — only 4% compared to 5.4%.

Those figures alone are grounds for thinking that Virginia is more committed than many other states to promote veteran employment. In one example of that state’s commitment, the commonwealth helped pioneer a public-private open data collaborative, Veteran Talent, to shed light on veteran employment issues. The Virginia Employment Commission contributed data on unemployed veterans in each county by age, education attainment and the occupation code for the job they seek.

Veteran Talent, a project funded by the Duffield Family Foundation, mashed up data from numerous public and private sources, including U.S. Census data and job sites like Monster.com, to create a detailed national picture of how many unemployed veterans there are, where they are located, what job skills they possess and what skills employers are looking for. Not only will the searchable database suggest where veterans could be focusing their job searches geographically and where employers can identify pockets of potential employees, but it allows researchers to plumb the data for insight into the nature of the challenge.

“We need a clear understanding of the problem,” says Aneesh Chopra, co-founder of big-data and predictive-analytics firm Hunch Analytics and former chief technology officer in the Obama administration, who spear-headed the effort. We’ve had the data all along, he says, but it resided in numerous unconnected databases. By mashing up the data and making it accessible to the public, Veteran Talent allows people to spot patterns and make connections that would have been impossible before.

The Corporate Executive Board Talent Neuron used the database to examine how many veterans would qualify for entry-level technology jobs. In Virginia, for example, Talent Neuron found 681 technology jobs posted by employers committed to hiring veteran talent. Of those, about 190 are entry-level. The analysis also identified about 275 trainable, unemployed veterans in Virginia alone.

While unemployed veterans may not possess all the technology requirements needed to match those job requirements, they may meet some criteria. In other words, they have a shorter training bridge to cross than someone from the general population in order to qualify for an entry tech job. Says Chopra: “The current workforce system isn’t doing that.”

Research by John Parman, a College of William & Mary economics professor, found that unemployment rates for veterans varies in Virginia from below 2% in Alexandria and Stafford County to more than 11% in Bedford County and the City of Roanoke. Jurisdictions with more dynamic economies that experience more income mobility show lower veteran unemployment rates, while jurisdictions with less mobility show higher veteran unemployment rates. But veterans don’t seem to benefit as much from higher-mobility economies than the general population does.

“These findings … lead to important considerations when crafting policies targeted at solving veteran unemployment issues,” writes Parman. “Using non-veteran data to predict the experiences of veterans can be misleading and policies targeting reductions in general unemployment rates may have the unintended consequence of widening gaps between veteran and non-veteran outcomes.”