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.

Austin has also asked Deputy Secretary of Defense Katheen Hicks to talk with Navy leaders, local Hawaii officials, experts and affected personnel and families during her visit to Hawaii this week, he said in a statement Monday.

Hicks will visit the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, which is at the center of the discussion about the source of the contamination.

“My expectation is that military leaders in Hawaii will continue to do everything they can — as fast as they can — to return residents safely back to their homes and to communicate clearly and frequently the steps they are taking to do so,” Austin said. He said he also expects military leaders to keep Hawaiian residents, legislators and leaders fully informed.

Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday visited Hawaii and participated in a town hall meeting with residents Dec. 5, where they were grilled about the Navy’s response and military families’ concerns about health issues and other problems related to the unsafe drinking water.

Austin said he’s getting daily updates from Navy leaders on the measures they’re taking to care for families, restore the water and coordinate with local Hawaii authorities on dealing with the issue.

Navy officials have said they’ve moved more than 3,000 families to hotels across the island. There are 11 housing areas affected, including six Navy communities, three Air Force communities and two Army communities.

“We take this very seriously,” Austin said in his statement.

“I appreciate the value of their efforts to date: providing temporary lodging; establishing a Pregnancy Medical Advice Hotline; delivering more than 150,000 gallons of potable water, and flying in additional water filtration systems to the island,” Austin said.

He supports the Navy’s decision to suspend operations at the Red Hill fuel storage tanks while officials investigate the source of the fuel. The Navy has also committed to conduct an independent study of operations and system integrity at the facility.

Navy officials said they have a “high degree of confidence, based on water testing results” that the contaminant is JP-5 jet fuel and that it comes from a relatively new leak, according to their opening statement to Hawaii state legislators Dec. 10.

But they’re also confident the problem wasn’t a result of a leak from one of the Red Hill fuel tanks, according to Rear Adm. Blake Converse, deputy commander of the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet headquarters.

“From the test results and engineering analysis to date, it appears that some quantity of JP-5 jet fuel entered the Red Hill well in a single event,” Converse stated, likely from a fuel spill that occurred Nov. 20 in a facility access tunnel that provides fire suppression and service lines. The contaminant was then pumped from that well and distributed across those portions of the Navy water system fed by the Red Hill well, according to his statement.

On Nov. 28, residents in a number of housing areas reported a fuel odor in their water. These were residents in neighborhoods fed by the Red Hill well, so that same evening, the Navy shut down that well and stood up the region’s emergency operations center to handle the problem.

Many of the residents had complained of mysterious symptoms before Nov. 28, such as rashes, sore throats, headaches, diarrhea and vomiting. There are now countless questions about current symptoms as well as long-term health effects, especially on children.

Thousands have been evaluated by medical staff, Austin said in his statement.

Dec. 13: Tricare open season ends. It applies to anyone enrolled in or eligible for a Tricare Prime option or Tricare Select. If you’re happy with your current health care plan, you don’t have to take any action.

This is the only time of year when you can make changes to — or enroll in — Tricare Prime, including the U.S. Family Health Plan, or Tricare Select, outside of a qualifying life event such as marriage, birth of a baby, or retirement from active duty. You can also switch plans entirely. Changes you make go into effect Jan. 1, 2022. Visit www.tricare.mil/openseason.

Tricare open season doesn’t apply to active duty service members; or to beneficiaries age 65 or older, who are covered by Tricare for Life. It doesn’t apply to the four premium-based health care plans: Tricare Reserve Select, Tricare Retired Reserve, Tricare Young Adult and Continued Health Care. Enrollment changes to these programs can be made at any time of the year.

To enroll in or change plans, you can log in to milConnect and click on the “Manage health benefits” button. You can visit the Enroll or Purchase a Plan section of the Tricare website for more information, including details if you want to call your Tricare regional contractor or the U.S. Family Health Plan Designated Provider to make the changes.

Dec. 13: Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program open season also ends Dec. 13. Most military retirees and their family members are eligible for dental and vision coverage under FEDVIP, which is administered by the Office of Personnel Management.

Active duty family members, reservists and their family members are among those eligible specifically for the vision coverage under FEDVIP. Visit www.benefeds.com.

Dec. 15: The more than 5,300 Walmart and Sam’s Club pharmacies will leave the Tricare network as of Dec. 15. There are more than 59,000 pharmacies in the Tricare retail pharmacy network. CVS pharmacies return to the Tricare network on Dec. 15, after a five-year hiatus. There are nearly 10,000 CVS pharmacy locations, including many inside Target stores.

Doolittle read the children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” to small children gathered on the carpet around his chair.

Doolittle says he is a strong proponent of reading and particularly of championing young readers. He spoke lovingly about his own reading habits as a child and of what he is reading now: mostly fantasy and science fiction. Doolittle is a major Star Wars fan.

The children responded to the reading by requesting a second book reading, which Doolittle obliged.

“I hope they came and saw a professional athlete in a major league baseball player that reads books. It shows that maybe reading is not something that’s just a part of their homework. It can be something that you enjoy as much as being outside and playing sports,” said Doolittle.

The event was held in relation to the military’s annual children’s Summer Reading Program, which has been implemented on military bases worldwide. The program is an initiative to promote reading as a pastime for children during the summer months and is held in conjunction with base libraries.

“I think it’s important. You know we talk a lot about how important it is for kids to stay active and get outside and get involved in organized sports and activities. But I think reading is another way for them to activate their brain, especially over the summer months when they’re away from school. I think it’s important for them to continue that development,” said Doolittle.

Lt. Cmdr. Talitha Moton and her husband, Dion Moton, a retired Navy veteran, were at the event with their three children. The Motons are participating in the military reading program through Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and have set a family goal of reading 300 children’s books by the end of summer. Not an easy feat as their youngest is only 16 months old; however, they say that reading aloud to their brood counts toward their goal.

The book reading was held as part of the Nats on Base initiative — referring to military bases — a program aimed at providing year-round experiences for service members and their families living in the greater Washington area.

The children in attendance were given a free baseball book, and the military families also were given free tickets to the game against the Atlanta Braves that followed the reading.

Doolittle is active in supporting the troops and veterans both with the Nats and off the field. He and his wife, Eireann Dolan, volunteer with multiple military and veterans’ groups throughout the year. In December 2018, Doolittle was awarded the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award in recognition of his work with military veterans and their families.

“As somebody that grew up in a military family, I kind of have that bond with them that makes it a little bit more meaningful,” said Doolittle. “I grew up going to visit my dad on base, and I never got to meet a major league player. To kind of give the children that experience, I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun.”

The Nats also organized a team visit to Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, in earlier in the season.

“That was really, really powerful,” Doolittle said. “The Nats have done a lot to get involved in the military community.”

The Nationals’ calendar is filled with military specific events throughout the summer and the entire year. The Nats on Base program offers service members discounted tickets through govx.com and free tickets through the Pentagon Federal Credit Union. Other events also offer free tickets and can be found on the team’s website.