In the decades following WWII, being a veteran mattered. Service personnel were welcomed back to civilian life with the sweeping GI Bill and jobs in corporate America. “If there was a choice to make, the veteran would be the one who was hired,” wrote Charles Leo, a professor at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management.
After the Vietnam era, veterans were often (unfairly) defined by the controversial war, resulting in higher-than-average unemployment. By the late ‘90s, with the military shrinking, employers were largely indifferent to veteran status as a distinct job candidate pool.