Obama presents Medal of Honor to a soldierThe overall U.S. unemployment rate ticked down last month and the economy added more than 350,000 private sector jobs over the past three months. But, over 850,000 U.S. veterans were unemployed in October and the jobless rate for post-9/11 veterans was 12.1 percent.

Ensuring that the nation’s veterans have more opportunities, President Obama is expanding on his Administration’s earlier hiring of 120,000 veterans into the federal government.

In the spirit of Veterans Day this week, the White House announced a series of executive actions yesterday that will provide new resources to help veterans translate military experience to the private sector job market, give them additional career development support and better identify companies looking to hire them.

Effective immediately, post-9/11 veterans will be entitled to enhanced services, including six months of personalized case management and counseling, at the roughly 3,000 One-Stop Career Centers located across the country.

The Department of Labor will launch a new online resource that allows veterans to enter their military occupation code and discover civilian occupations for which they are well qualified. The website, My Next Move for Veterans, will also include information about salaries, apprenticeships, and other related education and training programs.

A new Veterans Job Bank was created at the National Resource Directory, an easy to use tool to help veterans find job postings from companies looking to hire them. It already searches over 500,000 job postings and continues to grow. Additionally, in a few easy steps, companies looking to hire veterans can make sure the job postings on their own websites are part of this Veterans Jobs Bank.

Obama watches wheelchair basketball vets at the White HouseAdditionally this week, Congress is scheduled to consider the Returning Heroes and Wounded Warrior Tax Credits, two provisions in Obama’s American Jobs Act that would provide a tax credit of $5,600 for companies that hire unemployed veterans. The Wounded Warriors Tax Credit offers firms that hire veterans with service-connected disabilities a credit of $9,600 per veteran.

(Photo: Obama watches veterans play wheelchair basketball at the White House)

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