More Federal Government Jobs Going to Veterans

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reported last month that in Fiscal Year (FY) 2014, the Executive Branch of the Federal government increased the percentage of veteran new hires to 33 2 percent, surpassing the FY 2013 rate of 31 percent.

Additionally, FY 2014 marked the first time, since the President established the Veterans Employment Initiative, that the Federal government increased its overall new employee hires in the executive branch. In FY 2014, we hired approximately 180,000 new employees as compared to approximately 162,000 new employees in FY 2013 – an increase of approximately 18,000 total hires. Of those 180,000 hired, approximately 59,000 were veterans, equaling 33.2 percent of total new hires. This was a 9.2 percentage point increase over the FY 2009 baseline of 24.0 percent, and approximately 2.2 percentage points higher than the 31 percent realized in FY 2013.

In FY 2014, as the number of total Federal employees onboard dropped from 2,015,000 in FY 2013 to 1,990,000, the total number of veterans onboard saw an increase from 607,000 to approximately 612,000. Veterans currently represent 30.8 percent of the workforce, as compared to 25.8 percent in FY 2009 , when veterans represented approximately 512,000 out of 1,983,000 employees.