Since 2008, when recession gripped the US economy, the unemployment rate among Massachusetts veterans has soared, rising from 2.8 percent to 8.7 percent in one year, according to the most recent data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Bay State’s civilian population had an average unemployment rate of 8 percent in 2009, nearly a full percentage point lower than veterans, according to the data.

Veterans looking for jobs face unique challenges. Younger veterans returning from combat must make the transition to civilian life. Older veterans, who once easily found jobs in the skilled trades, have been hurt by losses in manufacturing. Disabled veterans often have limited job options. Globe North today looks at the effect of unemployment on three veterans this Veterans Day.

Bob Nadeau
'Old school' experience hasn't led to employment
‘I’m 62 years old. I have no college education,’’ Bob Nadeau said. “I have life and work experience. I was a kick-bum kind of guy at work. No slackers worked for me. That’s how I moved up in business.’’

The Vietnam-era Navy veteran from Lynn was laid off from his $65,000-a-year job as a sales manager last year. He’s been collecting unemployment benefits and searching for jobs with little luck.

“I’m from the old school,’’ said Nadeau, who is married with grown children. “I’m afraid no one’s going to hire me.’’

Nadeau looks for jobs at the North Shore Career Center in Salem, where he works with Tom Frisiello, the veterans employment specialist.

“A lot of younger veterans now are opting for schooling,’’ said Frisiello, who has been counseling veterans since the 1970s. “It’s different for older veterans. In the past, they could go into a trade, or into manufacturing. Today, a lot of jobs require a higher level of education than many of them have.’’

Nadeau, who is proud of his six-year stint in Navy, isn’t sure veterans status makes much difference.

“In this economy?’’ he said with a sigh. “I don’t think it matters a hill of beans. This career center is inundated with people looking for jobs.’’

WASHINGTON — The economic downturn and the trauma of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pushed more US veterans to suicide, Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said Thursday.

As Americans across the United States and around the world celebrated the contributions of men and women in uniform on Veterans Day, Shinseki outlined a sobering picture for the approximately 23 million veterans in the United States.
Only eight million of those veterans are currently registered with the Department of Veterans Affairs, Shinseki said. Many slip through the cracks due to crippling mental health problems, homelessness, alcohol and illegal drug abuse or crime.
Several studies have shown that suicides are on the rise among youths who have left the military.

"It's compounded by the stress, the trauma that goes with the current operations, where we have a much smaller military being asked to do so much and then repeat it tour after tour," Shinseki told National Public Radio (NPR).
"I know the suicide numbers are up."

In January, he indicated that 20 percent of some 30,000 suicides in the United States each year are committed by veterans. That means that an average of 18 veterans commit suicide each year.

Suicides claimed the lives of a record 309 servicemembers last year, up from 267 in 2008, according to Pentagon numbers. The number of suicides between 2005 and 2009 -- 1,100 -- exceeded that of the number of US military members killed in Afghanistan since 2001.

The Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs do not keep statistics on veteran deaths.

Reporting from Arlington, Va. — It's a perfect autumn Sunday and Chad Weikel is sitting outdoors, having a beer with his big brother, Ian. Chad's beer is resting in the cup holder of his folding chair. Ian's is propped up against his headstone.

Army Capt. Ian Weikel, 31, was killed in action in Iraq on April 18, 2006, so this is how they visit now.

Three rows back, Nicki Bunting's 3-year-old, Connor, is building a campfire for his dad. Or maybe it's an ant farm. He hasn't decided. He was 1 when his father, Army Capt. Brian "Bubba" Bunting, was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on Feb. 24, 2009. They drive from Maryland to "visit Daddy" every Sunday — Connor, his mom and his little brother, Cooper, an R-and-R baby conceived a month before his father died.

You don't see scenes like this at very many gravesites in America; in fact, you don't see them anywhere else but here at Arlington National Cemetery, the hallowed burial ground for two U.S. presidents, 12 Supreme Court justices and veterans of every war since the Revolution.

This is Section 60, where more than a tenth of the casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rest: 648 at last count, more than in any other single place. These service members died recently, and they died young. The grief here is raw — parents who outlived their children, spouses still raising their babies, friends who thought death was an older generation's burden.

Their sorrow has a tragically youthful spin that defies the rigid orderliness of a military burial ground better known for riderless horses and gun salutes. Section 60 is strewn with bits of unfinished life: carved pumpkins, cigars, a birthday cake, an "It's a Boy" balloon, Mardi Gras beads, a note — "We love you son. Always will." — a Darth Vader doll, a can of Bud Lite.

"We all share in the same loss," Nicki Bunting says. "In any other section or cemetery, I don't know each person's story. It could have been cancer or a car accident. But in Section 60, we've all had the same knock at the door."

On Thursday, the nation pauses to honor all who served and remember the fallen. Visitors will flock to Washington's monuments erected for nearly every American war. But there is no memorial for the two wars still raging. Section 60, on 18 acres of grass across the Potomac River from the nation's capital, has come to serve that purpose.