Walmart to hire vets.

[Cdnwolf]

Bill Simon, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., made a big splash yesterday when he announced two new initiatives the firm will launch this year: One focusing on putting returning veterans to work, with a promise to hire 100,000 veterans over the next five years.

The programs received praise from the likes of First Lady Michelle Obama; Jim Knotts, CEO of the veteran-support group Operation Homefront; as well as Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. But before we fall over each other to join these luminaries in their praise of the world’s biggest retailer, it’s worth taking a moment to dig deeper into the numbers.

First, though, let it be said that the goal of hiring veterans is a noble one, and one that should in many cases make business sense as well. As Simon said yesterday in his speech announcing the initiative, “Veterans have a record of performance under pressure. They’re quick learners, and they’re team players.” But many veterans have struggled to find work in a tough economy. Though the overall employment rate for veterans is below the national average, the unemployment rate for post-9/11 vets sits at 10.8%, versus 7.9% for the nation as a whole, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Especially for this group, Simon’s pledge to, “offer a job to any honorably discharged veteran within his or her first twelve months off active duty” must sound like a good deal.

But what exactly is Simon promising, and will he be helping veterans in a big way by fulfilling it? Walmart employs 1.3 million sales associates in the U.S. and claims an average annual turnover rate of 37%. At that rate, the company has to hire some 480,000 sales associates in the U.S. per year. If Walmart ends up hiring 100,000 veterans over five years, or 20,000 per year, that would account for only 4.2% of its total hiring. But according to the Veterans Administration and the Labor Department, veterans make up 9.3% of the civilian working population. To actually make a dent in veteran unemployment, Walmart would have to increase its annual hiring of veterans to 65,000, or 325,000 over five years — and hope other employers in the U.S. adopt similar hiring policies.