More Hiring of Veterans Urged

If you want to work for the federal government, it helps to have served in the military.

Since at least the Civil War, veterans have enjoyed an official leg up on other federal job seekers, both as an appreciation for their sacrifice and because of a belief that they are skilled team players. As a general practice, veterans who meet minimum qualifications for a job have five or 10 points added to their numerical rating when competing for civil service positions.

"[W]e as a federal government owe our veterans the utmost assurance that when they return from harm's way we will provide them their entitlement to veterans' preference based on service," Linda M. Springer, director of the Office of Personnel Management, said in a new annual report on federal employment of veterans.

The 55-page report, released last week, details federal agencies' outreach efforts in fiscal 2004, the most recent year for which data are available. The report notes, for instance, that veterans accounted for 33.6 percent of new full-time permanent federal hires in 2004, a 0.6 percent increase from 2003.

Overall, the government employed 453,793 veterans that year, making them 25.1 percent of the 1.8 million-strong federal civilian workforce. More than half of all veterans in the government -- about 51 percent, or 231,171 people -- worked in the Defense Department.

The long-term trend, however, shows a gradual decline. In 1994, 558,347 veterans made up 28 percent of the federal workforce. Since 2000, the number has never reached 26 percent. In fact, the raw number of veterans in the government fell in eight of the 10 years since 1995 . (Veterans do better in government than in the private sector, where they made up 9.4 percent of the workforce in 2003.)

Such figures have led some members of Congress to conclude that agencies must do more. The topic is especially sensitive these days as thousands of military members, some of them seriously injured, return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan and look for new work.

"While some agencies perform better than others in the practice of employing and re-employing veterans, . . . overall improvement is needed," said Rep. Lane Evans (Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. "I would like to see a robust employment-outreach effort by the administration to service members, veterans and military families."

Administration officials have said that such efforts are already underway. Agencies have sought out veterans at job fairs, through recruiting visits to medical centers and military bases, and through training for managers.

"The federal government recently has made a major effort to recruit more veterans," said Joseph Sharpe, deputy director for economics at the American Legion. "I do foresee an increase in veterans working for the federal government."