Jennifer Barnhill is a columnist for Military.com writing about military families.
When Angela Neal's husband found out that he was going to be able to pursue his Ph.D. as part of his next duty assignment, their family was excited. It seemed like the perfect time for Angela to lean into her career and get her Ph.D. too. So they both applied to the same "military friendly" school.
Her husband was accepted and was even offered a scholarship because of his military service. She wasn't.
"As one of the people candidly expressed to me, I was not accepted because I'm a military spouse," Neal said. The school official shared that she was not selected because she "could possibly move." Although her active-duty husband was just as much of a flight risk, she was rejected.
Instead of being resigned, Neal took action and began asking around in 2024 to see how widespread discrimination on the basis of military status was. She found that she was not alone. More than 70% of the roughly 100 people she heard from felt like they had been discriminated against when seeking employment. That mirrored both anecdotal reports and official research.
Although many states offer legal protections that could theoretically prevent discrimination on the basis of marital status -- aka marriage to someone in the military -- military spouses may not want to take on a costly legal battle to argue their way to fair employment opportunities. So, if existing protections haven't prevented discrimination, why bother adding military-connected status as a protected class?
Neal's personal investigation into this issue showed that these legal protections could provide "cover" for employers who wanted to offer military spouses special hiring priority. With these added legal protections, Neal believes employers would have the freedom to be more proactive in their decisions to hire military spouses, something that may offset existing discrimination.
And there is a precedent for making military status a protected class. During the COVID pandemic, veteran unemployment was at 11%, slightly lower than the national average of 15%. As of December 2024, it was just 2.8%. This did not happen accidentally. Veterans have made strides in overcoming employment barriers and discrimination as a direct result of concerted efforts to educate and incentivize employers to hire them.
"We really got ahead of veteran unemployment through protection, preference and incentive," said Olivia Burley, Washington State's military spouse liaison and a veteran military spouse. Burley said that, in order for legal protections to work as intended, they must be accompanied by increased preferential hiring through a partnership with and incentives for the private sector.
"We have not offered military spouses those three points," Burley said.
While military spouses do receive some federal hiring preference, they lack the official legal protections afforded to veterans. That is what Neal hopes to correct through raising awareness about this topic. Making military spouses a protected class would incentivize companies to hire them while disincentivizing discriminatory practices. And she has a blueprint in the state of Virginia.
In 2021, Virginia became the first state to add military dependents (spouses and children) as a protected class. When I contacted the Virginia Attorney General's Office to see whether any military spouses had utilized this legal protection, a representative said they do not track that data. But it may be that the benefits can't be proven by counting the number of spouses who have filed.
That is because proving discrimination is hard. It is a burdensome, costly and lengthy process. And one that relies upon military spouses fighting their battles alone.
That is why Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and John Boozman, R-Ark., have sponsored a bill that would offer employer incentives like the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. This would pay employers when they hire from specific groups, including veterans. Although Kaine and Boozman's Military Spouse Hiring Act received bipartisan support when it was introduced in 2023, it has yet to gain the traction it needs to pass.
The Defense Department's Defense State Liaison Office is doing its part to come to the aid of military spouses. It recently conducted a thorough assessment of the state laws and protections that affect military-connected family members. According to a December 2023 memo outlining its findings, "In general, few states recognized that family, caregivers and survivors were not afforded the same protections as service members, even though their conditions were a direct result of the service member's choice to serve." In 2024, the DoD declared it would officially support any efforts to add military status as a protected class.
We need the carrot (employer education and financial incentives) as well as the stick (legal protections). While military spouses may not choose to sue when faced with overt discrimination, the threat of suit may be enough to discourage bad actors, military and civilian.
Advocates are moving away from pulling on heartstrings and focusing on making the business case for hiring this highly mobile population. COVID and current civilian hiring trends have made this easier.
"I knocked the interview out of the park," recalled an Army military spouse during a recent Military Dinner Table Conversation I held on the topic of military status as a protected class. "Then, I got the notice that I didn't get the job. And I was like, 'Well, their loss.'"
So she was surprised to receive a phone call two and a half weeks later from the executive director of that organization. He told her the person they hired worked for two days and then stopped coming to work. They wanted to extend her an offer. In their subsequent negotiations, she said that her boss was still hesitant to hire her. "He still said to me, 'Well, you know, I'm still worried about you leaving because you're a military spouse.' We're literally in a conversation where the only reason he's talking to me is the non-military spouse he hired had left after two days, and he's still worried about me?"
Roughly 30% of new hires leave their job within the first 90 days and 64% of new hires say they would leave if they have a bad onboarding experience; 51% claim to change jobs every one to five years. Despite the fact that military spouses are more educated than their civilian peers, employers are still hesitant to hire employees they know will leave in two to three years. But when employers give military spouses a chance, many exceed expectations.
"Our military spouses are performing 300% better than their civilian counterparts," said Kimber Hill, founder and CEO of VirtForce, a career resource platform dedicated to connecting military spouses with remote job opportunities. One of VirtForce's strategies is to combat employer bias through educating them about the benefits of hiring military spouses. One of the organizations they helped educate was Travelers Insurance, which has now prioritized hiring military spouses. Although businesses like Travelers have intrinsic motivations for hiring from within the military community, the military community itself needs to get better at articulating the business case for hiring.
"The general population of the companies that I'm working with, they want to do this," Hill said. While she says some businesses may be worried about this new legal protection, she believes companies with that stance may not be the best culture fit for military spouses in the long run.
Veterans also faced discrimination and the challenge of enlightening the American public and hiring agencies about the skills they provide. This required them to educate a large number of people. They did this by self-identifying, something that military spouses have been conditioned not to do.
"I would still tell military spouses like I tell them now, 'Don't tell people that you're a military spouse,'" Burley said. In her personal experience, hidden bias will continue to be a problem and military spouses should disclose only after fully vetting the potential employer, she explained. "No matter what the protections are on legal documents, people can -- employers can -- get away with things."
Making military-connection a protected class certainly isn't a panacea or an easy button that will suddenly solve military spouse unemployment and halt all discrimination. It doesn't give us a leg up or a handout. It is just another tool that seeks to mitigate the documented challenges of military life -- challenges that if unaddressed will continue to plague military readiness and retention.
The hard truth is that military spouses have been unemployed at roughly 20% for nearly half a century, in part due to hiring discrimination. But veterans show us that combating this bias is possible. All that is left is for us to decide whether we are willing to put in the same effort for military spouses that we did for veterans.
