The 4.2% jobless rate for all veterans was up a tick from the 4.1% recorded in June, while the rate for post-9/11 veterans dropped from 4.8% in June to 4.7% in July. The unemployment rate for women veterans, meanwhile, went up from 3.6% in June to 3.8% in July.

The BLS report also included revised figures on the number of jobs added in June and May, which showed major downward trends. The initial May numbers showed that 129,000 jobs had been added, but that number was revised downward to 63,000. June’s initial job growth number was 57,000, but that number was revised to 20,000.

In addition, the BLS report stated, “Among the unemployed, the number of people on temporary layoff increased by 153,000 to 921,000 in July,” and the “number of permanent job losers changed little at 1.7 million.”

Friday’s BLS report came out the day after President Donald Trump declared at a Las Vegas rally that the U.S. economy was “the greatest in the history of the world,” although archived BLS reports show that the U.S. economy has added a total of 542,000 jobs over the 19 months of Trump’s second term, while nearly 2.7 million jobs were added in the last 19 months of the Biden administration.

In response to Friday’s report, White House aides put out not-to-worry statements noting job growth in construction and manufacturing.

White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a released statement that the “Trump industrial resurgence is on schedule.”

“Manufacturing (which added 5,000 jobs in July) and factory construction jobs grew again in July even as government payrolls continued to significantly shrink,” Desai said. “Unemployment claims are at record lows.”

On Fox Business News, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said that the end of the FIFA World Cup was a factor in the number of jobs lost. He described it as a “sort of rebound from all the employment we got from the World Cup, because the World Cup was ending.”

Hassett’s comments contrasted with the analysis of other economists who have focused on the eventual long-term impact of artificial intelligence and the uncertainty over whether the chokehold on oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz can be lifted.

“It’s a bleak (BLS) report,” Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a phone interview with Military Times. The report shows that “a lot of people are leaving the labor force,” and “there’s no doubt that the job market has flatlined in President Trump’s second term.”

“It’s just not a dynamic jobs market,” she added. “Tariffs and the war in Iran have caused companies to cut back” on hiring. To sidestep hiring slowdowns due to the impact of AI, “young people are looking again at trade schools.”

The BLS report also highlighted one of the great counter-intuitives of American economics: people losing their jobs can be good news for the stock markets, Long said.

By midday Friday, the Dow Industrial Average was up 50 points, possibly indicating that investors were betting on the gloomy jobs report making it unlikely that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates in September.

Think of it as “using AI to navigate your next mission,” Easterly said in a June 29 podcast of the Army’s Transition Assistance Program. Troops can feed information from the DD-214, the record of military service, into AI — minus the Social Security number and other identifiers — and give it prompts to decipher what jobs might be suitable, how much those jobs pay and what the chances might be for getting hired, he added.

In the process, transitioning soldiers should ditch the mindset that AI is a job-killing obstacle to overcome and instead think of it as a tool “that can support your transition,” said Easterly, director of the Plans, Analysis and Integration Office at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

About 200,000 service members — 100,000 from the Army alone — leave the military each year, and this year they are entering a jobs market in flux, with the long-term effects of AI anybody’s guess. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 57,000 jobs were created in June, about half of what Wall Street analysts had expected in the current low-hire, low fire jobs market.

The impact of AI, which some have compared to the vast societal changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, hasn’t yet produced the job apocalypse feared by many, but in May U.S employers cut 97,006 jobs, an increase of 16% over the 83,387 jobs cut in April, according to a report from the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The report showed that “AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs and the primary industry citing it is technology,” Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer for the Challenger firm, said in the report. “The open question isn’t whether AI changes the workforce, but how fast.”

The AI issue will become all too real in a few days for Navy Lt. Cmdr. Alvin Carr, 34, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, when he leaves the military at the end of July after 13 years in the sea service, mostly in human resources.

“I think I definitely saw that AI was a tool that was being widely adopted” by employers in their recruiting and screening efforts, Carr said in a phone interview with Military Times, but “I don’t think I had the awareness of the impact of AI on the job market that I have now.”

“I heard it’s going to be a tough,” Carr added, noting that he was still confident that “I shouldn’t have to struggle too much,” given his degree from Annapolis and the masters in business administration he earned during his time in service.

Carr is one of the transitioning service members who has sought the help of career “coaches” at the Wounded Warrior Project, where Lesly Marmolejos is a career transition manager for WWP’s Warriors to Work program.

Her first task in meeting with newcomers to the program is to disabuse them of what they think they already know about AI.

“If you tell me you’re an expert in AI, I know you’re lying,” Marmolejos said in a phone interview with Military Times.

As a “coach,” Marmolejos said one of the first things she tells transitioning troops is that there’s “not any type of certification you can get in AI. Well, there is, but it would be irrelevant in a month.”

Despite all the emphasis on being tech proficient, “I still very much believe that the human side of the hiring process is very important,” she said. “The feedback that I’m getting is that while we have to learn how to use AI as part of the employment process, we still matter. If you talk to a [jobs] recruiter, they’ll say the same thing.”

Networking is still a major component of the job search, Marmolejos added, and “we still encourage [service members] to go to job fairs. Who you know matters, and who can give you a referral still matters. I don’t think [AI is] the big bad wolf everyone’s making it out to be.”

In a separate phone interview with Military Times, Jacob Mousseau, a former Army sergeant and a coaching colleague of Marmolejos at WWP, said, “New people need to get over their fear” of AI and stop doomscrolling on how AI is going to make humans in the workforce obsolete.

Mousseau echoed Marmolejos in stressing the importance of networking, calling it “critical this year more than ever.”

He has developed his own five-step strategy for assisting transitioning service members in their job search, beginning with career exploration by using AI to turn “an assessment into a personalized roadmap — realistic pathways, salary ranges, target organizations, a 30-day plan to explore before committing.“

“I use it to build deep, individualized guides for warriors,” Mousseau added, “and I teach them to run a lighter version themselves so they can keep exploring on their own.”

Another perspective was offered by Ben Dufay, a veteran of both the Army and Navy who now is director of career preparation and training at the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University.

“We’re transitioning into an environment where even people in the environment don’t know what’s going on,” Dufay said of the impact of AI on employers as well as job seekers. “Everybody knows somebody who’s been laid off. Employers don’t know what they want out of AI. It is disrupting stuff. … Transition has always been something of a guessing game. That hasn’t changed.”

AI’s impact has only added to the traditional list of questions transitioning service members have, he noted.

“I don’t know what AI is. How does it help me?” Dufay stated, citing common questions. “How can I use it to assist me? What’s going to get me into an interview? How do you continue to engage with it, leverage it?”

Transitioning service members will also be facing a jobs market where an employer will occasionally decide that going with AI for a certain task was the wrong move, as happened with the Ford Motor Co. last month.

In a June 29 press call, Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of Vehicle Hardware Engineering, said that AI had botched the job of quality control.

Poon called for about 300-350 engineers to be hired to clean up the mess.

“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” Poon said.

Suicidal thoughts among U.S. veterans have risen nearly 50% in the past five years, but the frequency of suicide planning and attempts remained relatively stable, according to a new study based on a survey of 2,636 veterans.

Researchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Center for PTSD and the Yale School of Medicine analyzed data from the 2025-26 National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study and found that 13.4% of veterans reported suicidal thoughts in the previous two weeks, compared with 9% in the 2019-2020 survey.

The analysis found that rates of suicide planning and attempts remained unchanged in the same time frame, but for certain groups — particularly younger veterans and women — rates were higher for thoughts, planning and attempts over the five years.

Ian Fischer, the study’s lead author and a clinical psychologist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, said the research was needed to understand the changing veteran population and potential shifts in suicidal thoughts and behaviors that can drive suicide prevention efforts.

“The veteran population has become younger, and there have been increases in the proportion of women veterans and shifts in its racial and ethnic composition over the past five years, making it essential to monitor changes in suicidal thoughts and behaviors and identify the veterans who may benefit most from prevention and early intervention,” Fischer said Tuesday in a Yale press release.

More than 6,000 veterans have died each year by suicide since 2001. In 2024 — the most recent year for accurate nationwide data, 6,398 veterans died by suicide. Veterans ages 18 to 34 and those experiencing homelessness or health issues were at higher risk.

According to the VA, the suicide rates among veterans are 60% higher than the national average, with suicide the second leading cause of death among veterans under age 45.

The VA has invested millions in suicide prevention and teamed with community partners, providing grants and support to address suicide among former service members. It recently has focused on encouraging veterans to enroll in VA medical services, citing evidence that patients who receive health care at the VA have lower rates of suicide and suicide attempts.

The study, published July 20 in JAMA Network Open, showed that veterans who use the VA for primary health care were twice as likely to have received mental health treatment at some point in their lives. More than half of those who said they used VA health care services were actively enrolled in mental health care.

The survey also found that fewer than 37% of veterans who reported having suicidal thoughts in the previous two weeks were receiving mental health care.

“These findings suggest that the VA is playing an important role in connecting veterans at elevated suicide risk with mental healthcare,” said Brandon Nichter, a visiting scholar in Yale’s Department of Psychiatry and study coauthor, in a release.

“At the same time, many veterans with recent suicidal thoughts are still not engaged in treatment. Expanding outreach and reducing barriers to care across both VA and community health systems will be essential to reaching these individuals,” Nichter said.

According to the study, younger veterans remain at higher risk for suicide, possibly because post 9/11 veterans experienced of “elevated trauma exposure” during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Researchers noted that service-era comparisons are complicated by generational differences and “survivorship bias,” meaning older veterans may appear less likely to experience suicide behavior because younger veterans at highest risk are less likely to survive into old age.

According to the survey, woman veterans had higher odds of suicide planning and attempts, while VA national data shows that male veterans die by suicide at higher rates.

Risk factors for suicide attempts include major depression, alcohol use and adverse childhood experiences that preceded military service, according to the study, and risk factors for suicidal thoughts and planning included PTSD, major depressive disorder and adverse childhood experiences.

The authors cautioned that the study relied on self-reported data, and veterans may have been reluctant to disclose suicidal thoughts or attempts. Those surveyed also were a recruited group and did not include incarcerated or institutionalized veterans or other unique veteran subsets, meaning the sample was not fully representative of the U.S. veteran population.

Based on the survey results, researchers estimated that between 2.3 million and 2.4 million of the nation’s roughly 16 million veterans experienced suicidal thoughts within the study’s measured time frame. They also estimated that about 1.4 million veterans had planned suicide at some point and around 830,000 had attempted during their lifetimes.

The researchers said they hoped information contained in the study will be used for improving prevention efforts, intervention and treatment.

“Targeting key risk factors in vulnerable sub-populations may help mitigate suicide risk,” they wrote.

The report also showed an increase in the unemployment rate for all veterans from a remarkably low 3.2% in May to 4.1% in June, despite the continued strong showing of women veterans in the labor market.

The BLS data showed that the jobless rate for women veterans has come down from 7.1% in March to 4.4% in April and 3.3% in May before ticking up to 3.6% in June, which was still well below the month’s unemployment rate for the general population (4.1%).

For many analysts, the most concerning figures in the BLS report were the weak numbers on job creation. Total nonfarm payroll employment changed little in June by adding 57,000 jobs, about half of what analysts predicted.

A main concern was the hiring slowdown in the healthcare sector, which has consistently been setting the pace for adding jobs through both the Biden and Trump administrations.

The BLS report said that employment in healthcare added 22,000 jobs in June, “but at a slower pace than the average monthly gain over the prior 12 months of 38,000.”

Leisure and hospitality employment, meanwhile, usually a strong performer, declined by 61,000 jobs in June, “reflecting weaker than usual seasonal hiring,” the report said. Thus far in 2026, “employment in the industry has shown little net change.”

Overall, “it’s a pretty disappointing jobs report,” Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union, told Military Times in a phone interview.

“Tech is still strong,” she said, “but healthcare has cooled off a little bit,” and “wages are not keeping up with inflation.”

Long noted increases in the unemployment rates for veterans but added that the data is from a relatively small sample.

“That’s why you see a lot of movement” in the numbers for veterans, she said, adding that the “verdict is still out” on whether artificial intelligence will be the major job killer that many expect.

The AI impact on the jobs market is “not showing up in the data yet,” Natasha Sarin, a former assistant secretary at the Treasury Department under the Biden administration, told MS Now, which could be the result of new research showing that the expected impact of AI on white collar entry-level jobs may have been overstated.

The Trump administration sought to put the best face on the BLS report, showing a weakening labor market. Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, posted that the report “reinforces that the American labor market remains solid thanks to President Trump’s economic agenda.”

He called attention to the report that the nation added 3,000 manufacturing jobs in June, although that was down from 7,000 manufacturing jobs added in May.

New acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling stated that “Manufacturing employment, which was devastated under the Biden Administration, continues to grow as we secure historic investments and reshoring of critical industries,” despite the loss of 4,000 manufacturing jobs cited in the BLS report.

“President Trump’s America first agenda continues to provide greater wages for workers and certainty to the sectors which will fuel the next 250 years of U.S. economic security,” he added.

Despite the claims, the BLS data showed that wages were not keeping up with inflation. The report showed that wages rose 3.5% in June, while the annual inflation rate through May noted in a separate BLS report (the Consumer Price Index) rose by 4.2%.

It’s the standard that leaders cite, programs are built around and progress is measured against. But a recently published report reveals that the Department of Defense has been calculating unemployment differently from typical benchmarks, overstating unemployment rates and obscuring how many military spouses may have stopped looking for work entirely.

A March 2026 report revealed that the DoD calculates unemployment differently than the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, counting some spouses as unemployed who would typically be seen as out of the workforce.

The Pentagon attributes these differences to unique military lifestyle factors. However, according to economist and professor Amy Burnett Cross, this difference in calculation “makes these measures not comparable.”

In fact, if the Pentagon mirrored federal standards, the military spouse unemployment rate would drop from roughly 20% to 14% — still significantly higher than the national average, but lower than the figure cited for years in congressional testimony, policy discussions and news coverage.

Cross believes this “structurally inflates” military spouse unemployment while simultaneously reducing the number of spouses categorized as no longer participating in the workforce, a group rarely highlighted in DoD programming efforts and reports.

“I remember penny pinching so, so much in those days,” recalled Army spouse Elizabeth Mays of her husband’s first duty station in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. “I ended up taking a job making minimum wage at Sears in the shoe department, just to help us make ends meet.”

This was the first of many times Mays worked outside her field to remain employed. Subsequent duty stations yielded similar employment choices.

“Between commuting and then the workday, you’re spending 13 hours a day away from your newborn baby, and your husband is deployed and not even there at all. It’s just me,” said Mays.

She did the math and realized that after child care and transportation costs, her income wouldn’t cover her expenses. In fact, remaining in the workforce would “cost” her family $50 a week. “Those decisions did not make sense, and that was the point where I chose family.”

Mays’ experience is familiar to many military spouses, but it is an experience that is not well understood. Mays is not part of the roughly 20% of military spouses who are unemployed, those who are looking for work but not finding it. She is part of the roughly 36% of spouses who are not in the workforce at all.

“Anecdotally, I would say that we have a pretty large percentage of spouses that have removed themselves from the workforce,” said Eddy Mentzer, who oversaw child care family programs and spouse employment for the DoD. “They’re not captured in any way whatsoever.”

The lack of information on military spouses who have stopped looking for work may undercut the programs designed to help them.

Patricia Barron served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Military Community and Family Policy under President Biden from 2021 to 2025. Her office oversaw military spouse employment programming and collaborated with the Pentagon’s Office of People Analytics to survey military spouses.

“A question that I have always had to our researchers at DoD … ‘Are we asking the right questions?’” said Barron.

The answer she often received was that changing survey questions would hamper the department’s ability to track trends over time.

“There’s always, I would say, good reasoning for the pushback [to update surveys], but it keeps us stuck where we are,” she said. “There’s got to be a new way to think about the [spouse survey], and maybe it’s time to blow it up.”

For many military spouses, cycling in and out of the workforce is expected, even if it isn’t clearly documented or understood.

Upon discovering she was pregnant with their first child, Navy spouse Melinda Estrada made a plan to navigate her budding career in tech. She would work on her graduate degree while staying home with her new baby.

“And then once that’s done, then I’ll jump from my graduate degree, hopefully, to a full-time position,” said Estrada.

Because her husband’s assignment to attend school in Monterey, California, was only supposed to last 18 months, she didn’t see a point in looking for a job only to have to step away without the accrued work time required to be entitled to maternity leave.

A second child and increasing demands from her husband’s job delayed her graduate degree further, extending her time out of the workforce.

Mays, too, struggled to reenter the workforce.

“In Germany, I tried to go back to work,” said Mays, whose husband received overseas orders in 2014, moving her and her two children, ages two and four, far from family and friends.

Because there were limited jobs available overseas, she applied for a job outside her field, at a bank on the installation.

“They told me that they chose another candidate because they were going to be there longer than me,” she said.

Undeterred, she applied to work in merchandising at the Army Exchange and was hired after having to wait 15 months for her daughter to be old enough to be eligible for a spot in daycare.

“I came back from my first day on the job with training, and my husband said, ‘So, I have news.’ Our favorite phrase,” Mays recalled. “‘I have been selected for a job in D.C., and we have to move in 90 days.’”

Mays wanted to work, but resigned the following day, exiting the workforce.

Historically, DoD surveys have asked spouses if they “wanted to work.” As of 2019, the vast majority of those spouses, 85%, responded yes, but only 43% were employed.

This question was not included in the 2021 or 2024 surveys. However, recent DoD surveys have asked why spouses are not looking for work, allowing them to select only one answer. The Number 1 answer (30%) cited child care responsibilities.

Child care scarcity is a reality for all Americans, and military child care is no different.

According to a 2025 report by RAND, military child care programs are not keeping up with demand, leaving tens of thousands of military families without care.

The availability of affordable child care has a significant impact on military spouses’ participation in the workforce. According to a 2016 Health and Human Services report, a 10% reduction in the price of child care could increase maternal employment as high as 11%.

Despite the documented need for improved child care access, most military spouse employment solutions have focused on reducing unemployment through personal development and employment partnerships.

“The DoD has thrown money at trying to find employers who are willing to hire military spouses because people don’t want to hire people who are moving all the time,” said Maria Donnelly, the co-founder of the Military Family Foundation, a nonprofit that has helped military spouses navigate federal employment policies.

Donnelly was referring to one of the DoD’s employment solutions, the Military Spouse Employment Partnership, or MSEP, a membership-based program that encourages civilian employers to hire military spouses.

Since MSEP was launched in 2011, “more than 220,000 military spouses” have been hired. While the initiative requires its partners to document those they hire and retain, this data has not yet been publicly reported.

Both Estrada and Mays reported taking advantage of DoD-sponsored career development programs and internships. Neither walked away with jobs as a direct result of participating, but both formed networking connections that ultimately led to employment. For Estrada, another workforce departure followed.

In January 2026, the DoD announced an effort to reduce military spouse unemployment by 5%, increase Military Spouse Employment Partnership retention to 100% and establish a new military spouse unemployment office.

If experts are correct that the military is measuring unemployment differently than the rest of the country, it raises questions about whether current policies are targeting the right problem.

“I try not to should myself,” said Mays, who is currently employed by a military spouse-owned business that offers flexible remote work, a job she is thankful to have. “But I have this feeling and that I could and should be like at a director level or a management level, given my level of experience.”

Estrada is still looking for work.

“All the cumulative policies” Trump has promoted, including tax cuts and deregulation, “can’t be upended by a temporary Middle East skirmish,” Hassett said on Fox News. “This is really an economy that can’t be slowed down” added Hassett, director of the National Economic Council.

Hasset spoke as air raid sirens once again sounded in Israel and across the Gulf States to guard against another round of drone and missile strikes from Iran but before reports from the region said that a U.S. warplane had been shot down over Iran and the fate of the crew was unknown.

Later reports from several outlets said that one of the members of the two-member crew had been rescued by U.S. forces and a search was continuing for the second.

Hassett’s rosy analysis was prompted by the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that U.S. employers added 178,000 jobs in March, blowing past estimates that about 60,000 jobs would be added to payrolls.

In a post on X, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, “The March jobs report blew out expectations with strong construction job growth and a surge in manufacturing job creation as trillions of dollars in investments begin to materialize.”

However, the March jobs report was based on BLS data collected by mid-March, which was before the Feb. 28 start of the Iran war, and did not gauge the impact of $4 gasoline, $104 crude or wild swings in the stock market indexes. The markets were closed Friday, and so the impact of the BLS report on the markets would have to wait for them to re-open Monday.

The jobs report also showed that the national unemployment rate ticked down from 4.4% in February to 4.3% in March, while the jobless rate for all veterans came down from 4.1% in February to 3.9% in March.

The closely-watched unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans also came down from 4.8% in February to 4.5% in March.

Health care added 76,000 jobs in March, construction added 26,000 and manufacturing added 15,000, while federal government employment continued to decline in March, losing 18,000 jobs, the BLS said. Since October 2024, the number of jobs in federal government has declined by 355,000, or 11.8%.

In its monthly jobs report, the BLS stated that the unemployment rate for all veterans dropped from 4.5% in January to 4.1% in February, while the rate for post-9/11 veterans went down a full percentage point from 5.8% in January to 4.8% in February.

The drop in jobless rates for veterans came as the rate ticked up for the general population from 4.3% to 4.4%, reflecting the loss of 92,000 jobs cut by employers in February, the BLS said.

The manufacturing sector lost 12,000 jobs in February and a total of 90,000 jobs in 2025, the BLS said, despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to boost blue-collar jobs by pressing industries to bring back factories from overseas.

The troubling jobs report was based upon BLS data that was mostly compiled by mid-February, which was customary for the BLS and was well before the impact of the Feb. 28 start of the war with Iran and the resulting spike in oil prices and stock market turmoil could be gauged.

In her comments on the BLS report, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, placed the blame for job losses on the administration of former President Joe Biden. In a statement, DeRemer said, “I’m optimistic that job growth will continue as we undo the Biden-era catastrophe of soaring prices and stagnant wages.”

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, also sought to shrug off the troubling signs in the BLS report that he said came as “something of a surprise,” since “the economy is really strong.” He told CNBC that the BLS report was influenced by winter storms and strikes on the West Coast but “on average it’s about what we expect to be seeing.”

Despite the overall loss of jobs in February, the numbers in the BLS report show that “employers still want to hire veterans,” Kevin Rasch, Warriors to Work regional director at the Wounded Warrior Project, said in a phone interview with Military Times.

In previous years, the task was to convince employers that veterans were assets to their workforce, Rasch said, “but now the word is out” that veterans bring reliability, discipline and leadership skills to the job.

As a result, the unemployment rate for veterans has consistently been in the 3-5% range, and “that’s a solid place for us to be.” The concern now is on how the conflict in the Middle East will affect the labor market going forward, Rasch said.

“There is definitely the potential for impact, so we’re definitely watching to see what happens, but right now all we can do is serve those we’re serving,” Rasch said.

The concerns about the jobs market are continuing to pile up, said Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union.

“The war in Iran only adds more uncertainty to an already uneasy mood. Companies are going to be even more reluctant to hire this spring until the war ends and they can see consumers still spending. It’s a tense time for the U.S. economy,” Long said in a statement to Military Times.

Officials expect to maintain “as normal operations as possible” through closing on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, said John Hall, director of the Defense Commissary Agency, during a Oct. 24 webinar with members of industry, organized by the American Logistics Association.

“We want to serve our customers as well as we can, as if we’re in normal times. Then we’ll figure it out,” said Hall.

Currently officials have enough cash on hand to operate all the military discounted grocery stores through Dec. 4, the week after Thanksgiving, Hall said. On Dec. 5, they would have to start closing stores. They stressed that the situation is fluid and a number of options are being discussed within the commissary agency, with defense officials and with members of the industry that supplies products to the stores. He’s taken available steps to limit spending, such as stopping all temporary duty travel.

“We hope this doesn’t happen, but if it does, how are we going to manage that process?” said Jim Flannery, DeCA’s chief transformation officer and acting executive director for sales, marketing and eCommerce.

At issue is the commissary benefit, Hall said, which saves the average family of four about $4,000 a year if they shop regularly. Flannery noted that about 1.4 million households shop each month in those 168 stores that could be closed, for a combined benefit totaling about $1.3 billion a year.

“We’d be taking the military benefit from 25% savings to zero, he said.

Defense Department officials have given commissary officials an exception allowing them to operate all military commissaries during the government shutdown, until their cash reserves in the Defense Working Capital Fund run out. After that, the commissary agency must continue operating stores overseas and in certain remote areas of the U.S. Hall said officials have asked DOD for the authority to keep all the stores open, including stateside stores.

But as it is, if the money runs out on Dec. 5, the agency would have to start closing 168 commissaries in the continental United States, unless more cash is provided to continue operating. The remaining 67 stores would stay open — overseas stores including Hawaii and Puerto Rico, as well as in certain remote areas and areas designated as “food deserts” in the U.S.

According to Hall, those are: Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Anchorage, Alaska; Coast Guard Base Kodiak, Alaska; Fort Greely, Alaska; Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, Bridgeport, California; Fort Irwin, California; Los Angeles Air Force Base, California; Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Florida; Naval Air Station, Fallon, Nevada; Dugway Proving Ground, Utah; and Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, Washington.

But there’s a caveat, Hall said. Officials also aren’t sure how they’ll be able to pay for the shipment of commissary products overseas. It costs about $12 million a month to get products overseas, and officials would need the money before the end of December to extend those shipments to stores in January. They’ve asked for clarification from defense officials about that funding. In the meantime, they’re trying to plus up stocks of non-perishables in those locations.

Commissary employees are getting paid now, unlike many other government employees. But even aside from employee pay, it costs about $50 million a month to operate all the stores, for utilities, supplies and other expenses, Hall said. The working capital fund, supplied with about $1.4 billion annually in taxpayer dollars, pays for the operations, in order for the stores to be able to provide discounted groceries to the military community.

The commissary agency’s resale fund, which is used for funds to buy and sell products, is in good shape, Hall said, assuring suppliers that if DeCA places an order with them, the suppliers will be paid.

“We’re operating without a playbook here,” Hall said, and encouraged industry to reach out to him and Flannery “with any thoughts you have of what we might do.”

The comments drew immediate concern from Democratic senators who had pushed for Karen Brazell, the nominee for Veterans Affairs Under Secretary for Benefits, to dismiss the idea and support stronger protections for individuals currently receiving payouts for their military-connected injuries.

“The [benefits administration’s] core mission is to provide world-class service and benefits to our nation’s veterans, something they deserve and need,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ranking member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“You have been a part of this administration, so you’ve been a part of the policies and practices that have undermined the VA’s ability to deliver healthcare and benefits.”

Brazell, who currently serves as a senior advisor to VA Secretary Doug Collins, is expected to be confirmed to the senior department leadership post even with opposition from Senate Democrats. During her confirmation hearing Wednesday, numerous Republican lawmakers expressed support for her taking over the role.

However, the conflicts on display at the confirmation hearing hint at some of the broader fights to come with veterans disability compensation and pension benefits, which totaled more than $174 billion in fiscal 2024.

Brazell, who worked in VA’s office of enterprise integration during Trump’s first term in office, is an Army veteran and military spouse whose father also served. During her confirmation hearing, she spoke of the importance of making the benefits delivery process more streamlined and user-friendly.

But when pressed about potential changes to benefits eligibility, Brazell said only that her office “will ensure that all veterans are provided the benefits that they’ve earned.”

Democrats on the committee referenced past proposals supported by conservative leaders — including Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget — which would reduce certain benefits payouts, including cutting disability checks for veterans with ratings lower than 20% and dropping some compensated health conditions that aren’t directly related to military duty.

The proposals have not been formally backed by Trump or the current White House but have drawn significant preemptive opposition from veterans advocates.

Blumenthal pressed Brazell to reject those ideas outright. Instead, she promised a full review of operations.

“If confirmed, I will follow the law,” she said.

Collins and other senior department officials in recent months have pushed for significant cuts throughout VA, to include culling more than 30,000 federal jobs deemed expendable and canceling thousands of agency contracts.

But senior leaders have not proposed any broad changes to benefits or medical care eligibility, instead targeting individual programs aimed at specific groups, such as transgender veterans.

Still, several Democratic lawmakers said Brazell’s non-answers about the potential for benefits eligibility changes were disqualifying.

Committee leaders have not said when they will vote to advance Brazell’s nomination but hinted that a move could be made soon. Democrats on the committee have placed holds on all senior VA nominees, but Senate Republican leaders are discussing potential chamber rule changes to get around those parliamentary roadblocks.

Officials behind the 2025 Veterans Civic Health Index — compiled by the advocacy group We the Veterans and Military Families and the National Conference on Citizenship — said the findings likely reflect broader changes in community involvement and do not appear to be a sign of veterans stepping away from volunteer and leadership roles.

“We’re seeing, both across veterans and civilians, that there is a slight drop in many civic health measures,” said Chris Marvin, primary author of the report. “And we should be concerned about that.”

The report first debuted in 2021 and showed a significant gap in veterans’ willingness to volunteer with community groups, engage with local officials and participate in community activities.

This year’s survey found a smaller gap. Veterans and civilians reported volunteering at similar rates (27% vs 28%), but veterans who gave time to local groups averaged 93 hours of in charitable work, compared to 69 hours for non-veterans.

Veterans were also more likely to donate to non-political causes (56% vs 50% for non-veterans), spend time talking to neighbors (33% vs. 28% for non-veterans) and belong to a local civic group (32% vs. 25% for non-veterans).

Nearly three-fourths of veterans surveyed (73%) voted in the 2024 elections, compared to about 66% for non-veterans. Roughly 64% of veterans voted in their last local election cycle, compared to 53% for non-veterans.

But most of those participation markers were below 2021 levels. The report said no single cause can be identified for the drop, but noted that the country’s increased political polarization in recent years and persistent misconceptions about widespread mental health issues among veterans may have played a factor.

Marvin said he hopes the findings underscore the need for civic groups to seek out and recruit veterans, not out of pity but out of need.

“So many organizations … their first thought is, ‘We need to help the poor, down-and-out veteran,’” he said. “Folks should be thinking, ‘I have a problem to solve, and who can help me solve it? Probably veterans.’”

The report also notes that family members connected to servicemembers and veterans also appear more likely to be connected to community causes, although research data into their contributions is less available than the veterans figures.

Ben Keiser, executive chairman of We the Veterans and Military Families, said officials hope to build on that work in coming years, to better show the full value they bring to local communities.

“If we’re more intentional about recruiting veterans and military family members, more will step up,” he said. “We’ll see more investment, and more in terms of absolute numbers of people volunteering.”

The full report will be available on the We the Veterans and Military Families website on Thursday.