Green jobs for vets

Grant helps equip work force for environmental jobs

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In response to high unemployment among veterans, the Department of Labor started a $7.5 million nationwide initiative in July 2009 to provide 3,000 veterans with “green” jobs training in fields such as energy efficiency, weatherization and hazardous materials removal.

The unemployment rate among veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq was 14.7 percent in March — significantly higher than the country's jobless rate of 9.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Veterans Inc., a Worcester nonprofit that offers shelter and training to veterans, received a $300,000 grant, one of 17 distributed through the Veterans Workforce Investment Program. Once veterans are trained, agencies receiving the grants are expected to help veterans secure green jobs.

The challenge for Veterans Inc. has been that the green jobs industry has suffered like the rest of the economy, leading to a slow start to the program. But observers predict an eventual increase in green jobs because of new weatherization projects. Continued

Growth, at a snails pace, but not fast enough growth. Reason Private Capital, as the so called 'free market' economics, is not being invested as it was sold to the country,over the past three decades, as it would be if capital went to the top and the investors thus 'trickling down' to the once middle class and poorer workers! The Government, us, can only do so much to stem the collapse and stabilize it with our fingers crossed! Add to the lack of the private capital, we've been witness to the not regulating these industries, even with the laws already on the books let alone improving them to match the technology, and those who run them. From Wall Street to the Gulf of Mexico, across the spectrum of our economy!