Myth #3: Military Spouse Unemployment is at 23% Because Employers Don’t Recognize Milspouse Talent

Guest Post by Laura Schmiegel

If you’ve spent any time around military spouse employment conversations, you’ve heard the headline: “Military spouse unemployment is 23%.” Then comes the explanation: “Employers don’t recognize military spouse skills.”

That storyline is emotionally satisfying but strategically unhelpful.

Military spouses are not an undereducated or unmotivated population. They are, however, a highly mobile one.  That mobility has predictable labor-market consequences that have nothing to do with employer bias.

To understand why the unemployment rate stays elevated, we have to look at how repeated moves affect different types of spouses in different ways. 

How Repeated Moves Affect Professional Spouses

For professional spouses, the primary challenge is sustaining upward career momentum over time.

Each Permanent Change of Station, or PCS move introduces a break in employment. Individually, a few months out of the workforce may seem manageable. But over a decade of service, those gaps accumulate, leading to delayed promotions and thinner resumes compared to civilian peers.  In my 2008 OpEd for the Washington Post, “The Military vs. Wives”, I called this the ‘spouse tax’ – a cumulative penalty on a military spouse’s financial mobility that builds with each interstate move.

For professional and managerial roles, networking is the single most effective way to secure the next opportunity. Jobs at higher levels are less likely to be posted publicly and more likely to be filled through referrals.

Military spouses must reset their networks every move. It takes time to identify connectors, meet peers and earn the trust of one’s professional community.  Civilian professionals build these networks over years. Military spouses must rebuild them every two to three years. That is bound to create frustration and longer gaps in employment.

How Moves Affect Spouses Who Aren’t Career-Oriented

For spouses who aren’t trying to build a long-term professional career, the problem looks different, but the outcome is similar.

These spouses are looking for personal fulfillment, extra income or a way to integrate into their new community.  For these spouses, the biggest disadvantage is a lack of local knowledge about the job market.  Every new location requires time to learn who the employers are and who is hiring, all while establishing their family in a new community.

Until that learning happens, job searches stall.  The result is the same six-month average employment gap, not because employers won’t hire military spouses, but because information is local and must be rebuilt each time.

Why the 6-Month Employment Gap Persists

Across both groups the pattern is consistent.  PCS moves stall both job search and career progression. When you consider that, at any given moment a meaningful portion of the military is in transition, that reality mechanically inflates the unemployment rate.  23% unemployment is a snapshot of mobility in the armed services.  And the deficit is costly.  A 2016 study by Blue Star Families and the Sorenson Institute estimates the social cost of military spouse unemployment approaches $1 billion per year when factoring in lost tax revenue, wages spent in communities and even unemployment.  This issue matters, not just to spouses but to the communities they live and serve in.

What Actually Reduces Employment Gaps

If the problem is cumulative disruption and delayed job search, the solution isn’t more employer education or endless reskilling. To reduce the average six-month employment gap, military spouses need a multi-layered job-search strategy that starts before the move and accelerates access to information and opportunities after arrival.

That includes:

Archives

RSS Feed

Subscribe to Orion's Blog