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Our spouses serve beside us; let’s stand by them. Join with MOAA and national and local leaders to remove barriers and provide opportunities for military spouse employment.
A bad economy, a relocation, a wary employer — these and other career chal- lenges aff ect the 26 percent of military spouses who want to work but can’t fi nd jobs. It’s an alarming unemployment rate — much higher than that of their civil- ian peers. But we can help, by removing barriers to spouse employment, reducing costs and delays to transfer a professional license from one state to another, funding education for portable career develop- ment, and raising employer awareness about the value military spouses bring. In June, MOAA was proud to publicly pledge our long-standing support for mili- tary spouses by joining the Military Spouse Employment Partnership (MSEP), which aims to shrink the employment and wage gaps between military spouses and their civilian counterparts. I stood with 14 other organization leaders before Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden; Dr. Clif- ford L. Stanley, under secretary of defense for Personnel and Readiness; and business leaders at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., representing coop- eration among the business and nonprofi t communities, DoD, and the White House. MOAA’s commitment through MSEP — which asks employers to hire spouses, provides a forum to fi nd them, and tracks hiring and salary rates — is the culmina- tion of work we’ve done all year to increase support for military spouse careers. In March, we devoted our annual spouse symposium to career development, hosting
a military spouse career fair (below right) at which one-third of the attendees landed job interviews. We serve on the advisory council to the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation program to mentor mili- tary spouses and female veterans. And we continue to ask Congress to reevaluate changes to the Military Spouse Career Advancement Account (My- CAA) program
eliminating funding for spouses whose military sponsors served the longest. We need your help. If you’re an em-
ployer, hire military spouses; if you’re a mentor, advise them. As a member, include them: Call MOAA’s Member Service Center at (800) 234-6622 or email
msc@moaa.org to update your account with your spouse’s name and email address so he or she may access MOAA’s career center and sign up for the monthly MOAA Spouse E-News.
— Vice Adm. Norb Ryan Jr., USN-Ret.
*take action: Visit
www.moaa.org/mycaa to help make this program fair for all spouses. 12 MILITARY OFFICER SEPTEMBER 2011
PHOTO: SEAN SHANAHAN
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