Walmart has a new three-part plan that includes more jobs and opportunities for veterans.
Over the next five years, Walmart’s plans to hire more than 100,000 veterans. The plan targets veterans who have been honorably discharged in the first 12 months of active duty. The program is set to kick off on Memorial day this year and will include jobs in Walmart, Sam’s Club and its distribution centers.
In December the unemployment rate for veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan was 10.8 percent, which is 3-percent higher than the overall unemployment rate of 7.8 percent.
Local veteran, James Mock, believes Walmart’s new hiring pledge will be beneficial.
“There’s a lot of veterans out of work and I think it’d be a very good thing,” Mock said. “I need a job so if they’d give me a job that’d be great.”
The plan also includes spending $50 billion dollars to buy more U.S. made products in the next 10 years and helping move its part-time employees into full-time position.
Veterans can apply through Walmart’s career center website — careers.walmart.com — and human resource officials will flag new veteran applications with “priority status.”