In the global war on terrorism only one segment of American society — its military — seems engaged in the fight. Everyone else is encouraged to go about their business. No wartime tax hikes. No rationing. No reason to ponder burgeoning Defense budgets or eye-popping federal deficits.

The special burden on those who fight continues after they leave service. Since the Sept. 11 attack, the unemployment rate among veterans age 20 to 24 has jumped four percentage points, to 15 percent. It’s now almost double the jobless rate of nonveterans. Indeed, unemployment among nonveterans of the same age has fallen 2 points, to 8 percent.

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, calls the trend “startling.” He held a hearing in February to review the effectiveness of the Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service. Called VETS, the service administers two important programs for veterans seeking work: the Disabled Veterans’ Outreach Program (DVOP) and the Local Veterans’ Employment Representative (LVER).

DVOP and LVER are state-based though funded by the Department of Labor at a level of $162 million last year. DVOP helps disabled veterans develop skills for the workplace. LVER develops relationships with employers to encourage them to hire veterans.

Government audits have criticized both programs in the past for not focusing on veterans most in need, including those newly separated or disabled. At least one high-profile commission, in 1999, recommended that the programs be replaced. Instead, in 2002, Congress passed the Jobs for Veterans Act (JVA) to strengthen DVOP and LVER.

Despite the spike in unemployment among young veterans, Charles Ciccolella, assistant secretary of Labor for Veterans’ Employment and Training, testified that veterans’ job services actually have improved.

The JVA requires that all job-training or placement programs funded by the Labor Department give service priority to veterans. It authorizes VETS to set performance incentive awards for DVOP specialists and LVER representatives. It requires a performance accountability system and improved tracking of numbers of veterans who find and retain jobs.

Ciccolella says from the first to second year of the law’s implementation, the percentage of veterans who “entered employment” after using the programs rose to 60 percent from, well, 58 percent. Among disabled veterans, 56 percent touched by the programs got work, up from 53 percent. Job retention rates also rose by a few points.

But Joseph Sharpe of the American Legion says VETS is understaffed and underfunded by $120 million a year. Rates of job placement and veterans in job training are declining. Yet because the method of counting veterans as “assisted” has changed, the declines are disguised, Sharpe says. It leaves a “false impression” that One Stop Career Centers “are doing a better job of finding employment and training opportunities for veterans.”

Rick Weidman, director of government relations for the Vietnam Veterans of America, says the employment assistance system for veterans “is every bit as broken today as it was before the passage of the Jobs for Veterans Act, with even more financial and operational problems.”

The programs still are not performance-based “in any meaningful way,” Weidman says. The method of measuring job placements is “intellectually dishonest.” Ciccolella and staff, says Weidman, “are refusing to issue regulations to implement” all features of the JVA. They have pushed provisions “that reduce oversight and provide greater flexibility” to state offices and not those that would give veterans “priority of service” or hold states accountable for increasing vetarans’ employment.

With a million service personnel already having served in Iraq or Afghanistan, says Weidman, the nation needs a “true national strategy” to help returnees, to include a system of “monetary rewards for placements and strong measurable results for veterans, particularly disabled veterans.”

“We must also get away from the notion that this is a ‘cheap’ process and focus on quality placements for those most in need. The veterans’ staff members need to be unleashed from the yoke of the local office managers who in some cases hold them back,” Weidman says.

Sigurd Nilsen with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) notes that the Labor Department doesn’t plan to hold states accountable to comply with a national standard for veterans’ employment until 2007. He also notes that many states haven’t implemented an incentive program to recognize quality service towards veterans, as the 2002 law requires.

VETS officials told the GAO that current funding levels allow training of only 16 percent of state-level staff per year, which doesn’t even match annual staff turnover of 18 percent. Performance data from local offices that help veterans are not available in many states, limiting federal oversight and local-level accountability.

The bar set to measure success in helping veterans is surprisingly low, says Wesley Poriotis, chairman of the Center for Military and Private Sector Initiatives. If just 60 percent of veterans who contact One-Stop Career Centers find employment within six months, VETS has met its goal.

Returning warriors deserve better. Perhaps it’s time to stop pretending this war isn’t so costly that it should interrupt a steady flow of new tax breaks aimed more often than not at the nation’s well-to-do. Stop them at least until thousands of newly minted veterans have the help they need.

Tom Philpott is a freelance writer and syndicated news columnist. His column, "Military Update," appears in 48 daily newspapers throughout the United States and overseas.