Continued unemployment and underemployment among military spouses are hurting families and pose retention problems, experts said this week at a Brookings Institution event.
“We have to find ways to put military spouses to work so that our families, not only are we retaining them, but when the service member transitions, we are now going from two salaries to one salary, not from one salary to zero,” Elizabeth O’Brien, senior director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring Our Heroes Military Spouse Program, said, according to according to Military.com coverage of the event.
Mike Haynie, executive director of Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families, said military families’ economic situations can compromise their health and stability.
“There is not enough research being done as to the issues, questions, concerns impacting this community, certainly from an economic perspective,” Haynie said. “The stability and the health for those families is compromised as a function of the economic situation they face today.”
U.S. Air Force photo of Altus Air Force Base military spouse by Airman 1st Breanna Klemm