Book Description

By law, federal agencies are to provide preferential hiring consideration to veterans and others as a measure of national gratitude and compensation for their military service. The proposed Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1997, S. 1021, is to amend title 5 of the United States Code to provide that consideration may not be denied to veterans who are eligible for preference when applying for certain positions in federal service and for other purposes. Preference-eligible veterans represent a larger portion of the federal workforce than veterans do of the civilian workforce, and from 1993 through 1997 veterans with preference represented about 21 percent of all new career appointments to federal service. From 1990 through 1997, preference-eligible veterans represented a significantly higher percentage of the federal workforce than did veterans overall in the total civilian workforce. As figure 1 illustrates, preference-eligible veterans represent a gently declining portion of the federal workforce, and veterans also represent a declining portion of the total civilian workforce. However, in each year from 1990 through 1997, the percentage of preference-eligible veterans in the federal workforce was about twice as high as that of veterans in the civilian workforce.