The Quintessential Military Spouse

Chances are, that phrase calls up a specific mental image for most Americans. Perhaps you envision a young wife who is taking time away from the workforce to care for her family, functioning as both mother and father while her husband serves our country overseas. If you think of her career, you might imagine she works as a teacher or a nurse, best suited to the types of careers that “travel well” as she moves with her service member from one duty station to the next.

While that’s an easy picture to imagine, it isn’t an accurate representation of present-day military spouses. The truth is that today’s military spouses, who number more than one million, are too many and too diverse to be represented by a single trope. Military spouses today work as teachers and nurses, certainly, but also as biologists, social workers, and journalists. In fact, there are military spouses making meaningful contributions to America’s workforce across virtually every industry. She may be an occupational therapist; he may be a video producer. It’s also very possible that she or he may be actively looking for work: 21% of military spouses are, according to a recent Blue Star Families survey.

In fact, while veteran unemployment has declined in recent years from nearly 13% to less than half that rate, the unemployment rate for military spouses has held steady at roughly three times the unemployment rate of their civilian peers.

This high unemployment rate among spouses likely isn’t due to a lack of education. Eight-four percent of spouses have some college education, while 25% hold a bachelor’s degree and 10% have a post-graduate degree, according to the latest research from the Institute for Veterans and Military Families.

From personal experience I can tell you that these military spouses tend to be resourceful, adaptable, and loyal. Whether those qualities are developed through their experience as a military spouse or if they are simply the qualities that prepared them for it, I can’t say, but either way, I know those are exactly the sort of traits that employers and hiring managers are looking for in their employees. These are qualities that many military spouses have acquired and exactly the sort of traits that employers and hiring managers are looking for in their employees.

If military spouses have the educational background hiring managers are seeking, paired with the character traits that companies value, why are so many military spouses still looking for work?

The full answer is undoubtedly complex, but we do know that one of the biggest challenges is the frequency of moves (or Permanent Changes of Station, as Uncle Sam likes to call them), which often lead to a job change for military spouses. These moves, while allowing military spouses to gain a diverse body of personal and professional experience, can simultaneously make it challenging for military spouses to build a traditional resume that showcases a linear career progression. These spouses often have a compelling professional story, but not always one that’s easy to communicate via their resume.

That’s why, earlier this month, I traveled to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to join Hiring Our Heroes and Toyota at the re-launch of Career Spark. This free resume-building tool was created especially for military spouses to allow them to highlight their experience and skills in industry-valued language. Even better? Once spouses finish building a resume that truly showcases their skills and tells their story, the tool connects them directly with the thousands of employers who are looking for military spouse candidates.

That’s welcome news, both for military spouse employment advocates like me as well as the dozens of recruiters and hiring managers representing businesses of all sizes and from all over the country that I’ve spoken with over the last year. Together, we’re going to move that stalled military spouse unemployment needle, and that’s a win-win proposition for military spouses and American businesses -- and ultimately, our country.