Financial advisors looking to serve some of the 2.8 million veterans discharged from the military between 2002 and 2021 will find valuable data on the work they are doing now in a new Census Bureau report.
Former drone operators and operational intelligence specialists have among the highest post-service pay, according to the Census Bureau, which partnered with the Department of Defense to update and expand Veterans Employment Outcomes (VEO) data. First released in 2020, VEO initially featured data only on U.S. Army veterans and now includes all branches of the military.
Earnings and employment differ across military rank and occupation, regardless of the branch of military service. For example, infantry and combat veterans have lower earnings and employment rates in civilian life than veterans with specialized military training and work experience. The finding that the highest-paid veterans include former drone operators and operational intelligence specialists applies to those who served in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
“The specialized skills developed in these military occupations are highly valued by civilian employers in a wide range of industries, such as professional, scientific, and technical services, manufacturing, and the federal government,” write the economists who wrote the report.
A Mixed Bag
Veterans of the Air Force and Coast Guard who served as aircraft mechanics have relatively lower earnings, which the authors write may reflect the narrower range of civilian job options matching their skills.
Infantry veterans primarily work in the administrative and support services, manufacturing and retail trade sectors. Air Force veterans mostly go into professional services. Many Coast Guard veterans work in public administration.
The highest-paying employment areas for veterans are mostly in the professional services sector. That is especially the case for Air Force veterans, as security and weapons development firms will likely value veterans’ experience with military technology.
Women Veterans
The typical earnings for women veterans are lower than that of men one year after discharge from service, regardless of their branch of service. Among Army and Marine Corps veterans, this earnings gap has averaged about $5,600 from 2002 to 2020. This initial earnings gap is about twice as large for Air Force and Navy veterans.
However, earnings differences across race and ethnicity tend to be smaller across all branches.
New Vets
New veterans were more likely to find steady work as the labor market improved after 2011. The “Pandemic Recession” of 2020 appears to have affected new veterans less than the 2007-2009 Great Recession, except for Air Force veterans. They fared worse than other veterans, likely because of disruptions to air travel in the wake of the pandemic.
VEO statistics on enlisted Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard veterans discharged between 2002 and 2021 are available on the VEO Explorer.
The authors of the report are Andrew Foote, a Census Bureau lead economist, Henry Hyatt, a principal economist, and Hubert Janicki and David Wasser, economists in the Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies.
