Remarks at the DOL Salute to Veterans, Washington, D.C., November 5, 2015

[as prepared for delivery]

Good morning, and thanks for being here. For those of you from outside DOL, let me extend my welcome to the Frances Perkins Building. We appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedules to help us honor not only our own veterans here at DOL, but all of those who have served our nation in uniform. Thanks especially to our VSO partners who are here with us, our colleagues from across the government, as well as the members of our Advisory Committee on Veterans' Employment, Training, and Employer Outreach, who are so helpful in providing us the outside perspective we need to make good decisions and develop programs that are effective and impactful.

I especially want to thank you, Terry, for your service to our country and your leadership here at DOL. Your advice and counsel have been invaluable to me, and I've enjoyed our trips together to visit military service members and veterans around the country. I know this work means a lot to you, not only because of your own service, but that of your husband and now your daughter, a cadet at the Coast Guard Academy.

We really could celebrate and salute veterans every day at DOL — because every day, our staff around the country is helping service members, veterans, their families, and survivors in so many ways, from preparing for and finding work, to helping employers better accommodate veterans with disabilities, and everything in between. We also have the blessing of more than 3400 veterans on the staff here at DOL, which is more than 21% of our total workforce. And in FY15, more than 32% of our new hires were veterans.

In addition to our own hiring efforts, the rest of the economy has figured out that veterans are great employees as well. The unemployment rate for veterans has fallen to 4.3%, from a high of 8.7% during the recession, and even "Gulf War Era II" veterans, or Post 9/11 veterans, have seen their unemployment rate come below the rest of the civilian population at 5.0%. We certainly can't take credit for all of that wonderful progress, but DOL helps more than a million veterans every year, and in 2014, we helped more than 150,000 veterans through our Jobs for Veterans State Grants program alone. We also helped more than 17,000 formerly homeless veterans find employment in 2014, with an average starting wage of almost $12 an hour.

We also have a program at American Job Centers in 27 states called the Disability Employment Initiative, which focuses on improving coordination and services for jobseekers with disabilities, and we have spent more than $110 million supporting Americans with disabilities, including veterans with disabilities, over the last 6 years. And that is money that has been money well spent.

Now, these numbers should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever heard me talk about veterans, because I love this work. This past summer, Terry and I went to Hawaii to the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation's Hiring our Heroes Job Summit, and I got to see every branch of our military in action. I saw the Army's 25th Infantry Division practice a medevac out of a jungle in a Blackhawk helicopter. I went to the Coast Guard's 24-hour operations center in Honolulu and toured a Cutter. I sat down with Marines and their spouses to talk about their transitions. I toured a nuclear submarine with our silent sailors at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam. And I got to fly an Air Force C-17. Don't worry, it was a simulator. I also joined the Commander of PACOM in paying my respects at the USS Arizona, which sank and still rests at Pearl Harbor, as you know.

This was a very moving and informative trip. And in addition to being in a really beautiful part of our country, it gave me the opportunity to see every branch of the military all in one place. I've been to other facilities around the country, but I don't think there is anywhere else besides Washington, D.C. that you can see them all together. It also gave me an appreciation for the transitions that our military service members and their families go through. It might sound great to be stationed in Hawaii — and many of them said as much — but they also commented that it makes leaving the military very hard, because they are so far away from their families and also where they want to work when they get out. With a 6-hour time difference to the East Coast, for example, it's hard to find a good time to talk to future employers on the phone, and it's not like they can just take one day of leave to go to a job interview. I wouldn't have thought of that, and that is why I like getting out there to make house calls, to hear about their hopes and their difficulties firsthand.

VA Secretary McDonald joined me for parts of this visit as well, and we co-hosted roundtables of disabled veterans, women veterans, and Native Hawaiian veterans. DOL and VA work hand-in-hand to support veterans of all walks of life, but especially disabled veterans, which is the theme of this year's Salute to Vets. All veterans get priority of service in our American Job Centers, and we have dedicated staff members in many of the AJCs to help veterans with disabilities get all of the help they need. We even have some staff members at VA Medical Centers across the country, because we want to find and serve veterans where we are! Secretary McDonald and I speak regularly, and have gotten to travel together a fair bit to bring attention to issues like ending veterans' homelessness, as well as supporting transitioning service members.

Before I close, I want to just call attention to the fact that 25 years ago this past summer, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law by President George Herbert Walker Bush. Likely everyone here knows someone who has benefitted from this historical legislation, or has themselves, and this is especially true for our disabled veterans. We want to get folks focused on the last 7 letters of the word disability, instead of the first 3 letters. In honor of the ADA's 25th, Terry and I went to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center this summer to spend time with some of our wounded warriors and those caring for them, and it was nothing short of inspirational.

It was early in the morning, when most people weren't even in work yet, but already the Military Advanced Training Center, or MATC, was full. You might call the MATC a gym, and I guess technically it is, but it is so much more than that. You see, the MATC is where our wounded warriors, and their families, learn how to cope with and overcome their injuries. This is where our Olympic athlete-level military service members learn how to walk and run again after losing a leg, or learn to do push-ups and pull-ups again with a new prosthetic arm, or even rock climb or swim with no limbs at all.

The MATC is a magical place, and it is so full of hope. Every one of the young men and women that I met that morning told me three things. First, they all just wanted to get back to their units; to get back out there and finish the mission. Second, they said they were exceptionally well cared for by the world-class staff, which was readily apparent and obviously well-deserved. And third, they also told me that while they were very optimistic about the future, they didn't quite know what they were going to do next if they weren't able to stay in the military. It's not that they were afraid of the change. They had already conquered a lot of change. It's that they had something happen to them very suddenly and they didn't want it to slow them down.

Well, that is why we're here folks. Who wouldn't want someone with that kind of determination on their team? With leaders like Terry Gerton at VETS and Jennifer Sheehy at ODEP, we are there for our disabled veterans at every point along the way, and that makes me so proud. My dad earned his citizenship through military service in the Army, and then spent the rest of his life as a VA doctor, caring for men and women in Buffalo just like those I met that day at Walter Reed. I'm so honored to be part of an organization that contributes to that mission, because those young men and women aren't going to be young forever, and they might need help from time to time, and the dedicated public servants at DOL and across our whole government are going to be there for them no matter what they need; so that everyone has access to opportunity.

Because we all know that America is truly strongest when we field a full team and our veterans are some of our most valuable players. Disabled veterans contribute every day to so many workplaces, which we know firsthand here at DOL, but I know there is more we can do to help companies and government recruit and retain them, so we aren't going to stop.

So on this Salute to Veterans 2015, this is an opportunity to say thank you to all of our nation's veterans. To say thank you for all of our employees who are serving so many people in so many different ways. We are making a ton of progress, but we still have work to do.

Thank you again for being here this morning, and for all you do every day to support our service members, our veterans, and their families and survivors. Happy Veterans Day!