What percent of the thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq are being deactivated?
What do you mean by deactivated? I’m presuming you mean being released from active military service (or, as more than a few would consider it, being kicked out) and sent into either the Reserves or the civilian world. I’m curious about this answer myself, now that you mention it.
Active Army is reducing its numbers by 140,000. This will be through a combination of fewer enlistements, stricter reenlistments, forced seperations and (possibly in the near future) early retirements.
The Air Force is going through similar measures, but that has been ongoing since the end of the Cold War.
Yes, that’s what I meant.
Around 140,000 people being released into the workforce. That’s going to send the unemployment number back into the 9+% range again, isn’t it?
Do they qualify for some kind of severance pay and/or unemployment benefits?
I know what you meant, but the word ‘deactivated’ sounded like they were a bunch of androids that were having their energy packs removed.
I’m sorry but it really sounded funny to me.
That was the first visual I got too.
Mangosteen, at the very least, we get money for college, I’m not sure about other benefits. Lots of troops go into the Reserves or the National Guard after leaving active service, and that comes with its own pay and benefits. They typically get paid considerably less, given that they only get paid “full time” during the periods that they are actually doing the military thing. That would be the “two weekends a month” thing you used to hear about that they don’t bring up since the war in Afghanistan started.
If Reservists get called up (respond to natural disasters, deploy overseas to fight in a war, or sometimes just to work in a stateside unit alongside the active duty troops), they get paid like regular troops for that time period. At least, that’s how I understand it, it’s never been terribly clear to me as an Active Duty guy.
At my first base, I was surprised to learn that a sizable portion of the civilian employees working in our unit were actually Guardsmen and Reservists who worked for the Air Force for their “day job”, so at least a few of these guys might end up getting civilian jobs in the Army doing effectively the same thing (not infantrymen or other combat specialties, but mechanics, police, administrative and supply folks, etc.) I doubt that the Army has 140,000 civilian job openings for that sort of thing though.
I’m not sure where that 140,000 number comes from. The figures I’ve seen are around 50,000 in personnel reductions over the next four-five years.
I wonder what the effect of having so many former troops reentering the job market will have on every other person who is trying to get a job. Given the real life training these men and women have been given, it seems a slam dunk for them to get jobs.
But this is a weird market these days.
If I were in the service now, I would do what I could to stay in.
Yeah, my training as an M-1 Abrams Crewman had employers throwing their doors wide open for me. :rolleyes:
Seriosuly, with about a 9:1 tail/teeth ratio, most of the “9” are marginally employable in some civilian capacity.
The infantry, tankers, and artillery folks are pretty much screwed. Not much call in the civilian job market for the primary skill sets of infantry, tankers, and artillerymen. Maybe some secondary-skills employability as a rent-a-cop or janitor.
Hell, even helo gunship pilots can find a job as the local new traffic chopper jockey, or maybe an EMS pilot.
Again, the drawdown of the Army is planned over the next four to five years. In contrast, overall public sector jobs (including bureaucrats, teachers, police, etc) has numbered about half a million over the last three years with the trend expected to continue as governments continue to try to cut spending.
The downsizing of government is indeed an economic concern, but the downsizing of the military is really just a small slice of the issue.
Front page of last week’s Army Times. A lot has happened since September.
350,000 man regular army? That is a bit too small ain’t.
Do you have a link? I don’t doubt the existence of the article, I just want to read it. I’ve tried googling quite a bit, and I can only find a couple discussions on the headline of the article, but not the article itself. My guess is that the number relates to the defense cuts that would happen in 2013 because of the failure of the super committee.
If the defense cuts do happen - and there is a whole year for Congress to consider whether to waive them - then the President has the option of exempting personnel from the cuts, and instead applying the reductions to R&D, equipment, and general support costs. I suspect that the 140,000 may represent the worst case scenario, in which the cuts are not deferred by Congress, and the White House does not waive them for personnel accounts.
Please tell me you buy the Times for the cartoons. If the Army Times is anything like the Air Force Times, that stuff will make you stupid.
No, and I searched quite a bit before just giving up and saying “Last week’s article”. I think one needs a subscription to pull it off their site. But when I get back home at the end of the week, I will try to find one and scan it for you.
No sweat, I get them at the office. I’ll look it up next week. Thanks, though.
Interesting tangential article in the Washington Post today http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/veterans-affairs-claims-progress-in-ending-homelessness-among-vets/2011/12/19/gIQAMwfTJP_story.html?hpid=z4 about the effort to end (or at least reduce) homelessness among veterans. Look through the readers’ commentary for some perceptions about veterans’ difficulty in finding jobs.