 Good morning and welcome to the National Employee Center of ours. My name is Noah. We have exciting guests today. I'll get to her as soon as possible. But I did want to recognize the... Very nice. Thank you so much. You keep your quiet please and we'll take your conversation into that. Thank you. So I'd like to introduce my staff first. It's on the stage here. I have a very new assistant employment director on the staff. He starts next month. And that's Jeremy Yosef. They're an assistant national employment director. Brian Burgosa, that was in March. And he always recommended that he was going to get diamond before I knew the development strategy. Anyway, I'd also like to introduce the interim Employment Committee. So sitting in the front row here is Joe Hull. Lisa Gregory. Joan Washington. Merced C.C. Maisette. I can see her in the room. But that's our employment. The Interim Employment Committee. We're very important to what we do. So this morning we are very blessed to have with us a very important person. I'd like to bring her up and introduce her. I want to bring her up officially. Obviously, as is the government official, she has to leave to go to the airport. So without further ado, let me introduce. Ms. Margarita Dublin is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations and Management at the U.S. Department of Labor. Veterans Employment and Training Service, known as VES. She provides oversight of the entire portfolio of VES programs. And there are $316 million, but she is a senior career official in the agency. She has dedicated her entire career to service to American veterans prior to coming to the VES in July of 2021. Ms. Delvin served with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for over 25 years where she became her career as a certified rehabilitation counselor, processed and progressed through leadership positions within VDA, BHA, and at the Department of VA Department of Labor. Ms. Delvin recently served as the Veterans Health Administration's Chief Learning Officer. Prior to that role, Ms. Delvin served as a Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits in Washington, D.C. In this position, she was responsible of the Veterans Benefits Administration, according to Administration Advocacy Program, including education, formal guarantee, disability compensation, pension, veteran readiness, employment, life insurance, and military to civilian transition assistance. Ms. Delvin is also a proud mother of two sons. Her oldest son is a veteran Marine who recently left after duty. The Assistant Secretary for Veterans is not clearly well today, and Ms. Delvin filled in at the last moment. We're very grateful that she is. We have a great role for her support and participation in our convention and her long service to support disabled veterans. Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Margaret Delvin. Thank you, my pleasure. Thank you, my pleasure. I think that's the most pleasant idea, and I'm short, so thank you. So thank you for that great introduction. I really appreciate it. It's really my honor and pleasure to be here. I also, I don't see any Marshall, but I don't see any Marshall for many, many years. I've been working for all the work that's been done on the project over the years. Mark Burgess, Barry, Justin Oskie. I want to thank everybody for having us here. It's a really important partnership, and so DOL has very happy to be here to talk to you about our programs and of course, Randy's NDC. So I don't see any of them in the audience, but I wanted to formally thank them. So your 100th conference, yes. This is really exciting. Whatever it is for me to be here to talk to you all. Thank you for everything that you do, for the over a million veterans that you represent. I want to tell you that, you know, my experience, I'm not at VA anymore, so please don't ask me VA questions, but when I very first started my career at VA, one of my earliest experiences was working with DAP on the National Service Officer, OJT program, working with bringing recruiting veterans into that program as a VRD counselor. And it was an amazing, great partnership. The other thing is that we have counselors that I always appreciated was my ability to, I know some of the seniors who are bringing along this, being able to go down the hall and talk to DAP NSO when I set up with my office, who I knew needed something extra just to get over that to get into the VRD program. Sometimes they had a 10% need that I ever created. And DAP was always there and always, there was always an episode of building a state with me and helped that veteran work through the system. So I want to say I appreciate that partnership of many, many years with DAP. I am very fortunate at DOA that's got an amazing team. Over 96% of veterans and even the employees that we have who are not veterans are typically from military families. I am not a veteran myself, I did not serve in the military, come from a military family, I served in the Navy, my brother is retired Army and you heard about my oldest son and I have a nephew who is in the airport. So look my little mic and I'll give my people cover all of the services. I'm trying to convince my youngest to go and college down and he's on this track. We have over 2,800 people serving veterans in our organization. It's a combination of federal employees, state employees, contractors, grantees and other partners and so we have a wide network and I want to tell you about how we serve veterans and I will take questions at the end and I want to tell you about a couple of initiatives and what our operations are. We are in six regions across the country between all of our organizational resources that I described. We are in military installations across the globe, performing the transition systems program activities and we are in American jobs and nationalities. We also have regional government coordinators that work directly with employers and you may be familiar with the state-of-the-art outreach program. We are the program that administers that grant that enables the debop and I'll give you the dark side of the concept of grant. We have 400 contractors at over 200 instillations worldwide with a transition service around 200,000 transition service times per year and we are in the employment needs of homeless veterans through the homeless veterans integration program. I have been on the road quite a bit and so has my boss, Mr. Rodriguez and as we go on the road we make it a point to talk to veterans as often as we can. We're also talking to our grantees and to employers and we've got some valuable insights in particular talking to employers. I do want to talk a bit about the veteran narrative and how it's important to the success of our veterans in the workforce and also to our all-voluntary workforce. We have been a deal that's very heavily involved in the effort to eliminate veteran suicide and so, you know, it's interesting that VA obviously has a huge focus CDC put is a multi-government effort and it is very intensive right now with a lot of working groups focusing on the upstream effects and the protective factors and one thing that we know is employment is a protective factor. It's not just about financial security although that isn't just a bit it's also about social connectivity it's about identity, it's about purpose and mission and those are all factors for resiliency that can help prevent that horrible event when a veteran dies by suicide. So we are all and what that leads me to is what do we want people to know about veterans and I want to talk a bit about the statistics about veterans that really speak to the fact that veterans yes, they've been through a lot and yes, we should lean in and make sure they have the benefits that they've earned and the services that they need and something that they can hand up and we are there to give them that hand up but the working veteran narrative with the harmful to the all-voluntary so I want to talk about why I believe veterans are not or maybe veterans are doing an amazing job in the statistics and the data is important to have When we look at the data let's start with who can go into the military and I'm sure you come along with this time I'm sure I am, we should be inquired but I'm going to say anyways it's important according to DOD data only 23% of 17 to 24 year olds are even eligible to go into the military the military services already are starting the cream of the crop they are starting the best possible youth who can go into military service and then what we also know is that veterans have lower unemployment rates than their non-vectoring counterparts at the Department of Labor we have the Bureau of Labor Statistics and they I'll talk about the it's 2.7% is the unemployment rate for veterans versus 3.4% for non-vectors that's amazing we know that veterans come with a whole different set of skills soft skills and technical skills that employers are reaching for and seeking out as veterans today but let me talk a little bit more about why veterans are doing so well Pew Research shows that veterans have a 17% higher standard of living than their non-veteran peers that's amazing the US Census shows that less than 11 veterans earn more than those who have never served in a non-vectoring department and a big difference in the show is that veterans have 39% more life than they're non-vectoring counterparts this is a good news narrative and we need to tell this narrative service to our nation facilitates a better long term career trajectory than those who did served and this message is essential to our future and as you may know the military services are starting to be there are a group of veterans and the more we can talk about that military service is a viable career track I'm a mother, as you know and I know that when my kids were in high school it was very frustrating to me to see I'm all about pushing college and colleges super important it is not the only way to success my career membership is a viable option military service is an amazing option and it should never be seen as the other option besides colleges and that is something that I forget on my soapbox for hours today between 180 and 200,000 military service members leave so fast this year so it's not just about recruitment it's also about retention retention is absolutely critical as well to the all law of the world, why am I talking about this because I'm asking for your partnership and helping to share the good news about military service being a great way to serve your country but in serving your country having great career options about the service reimbursement is a family decision that's why as part of the military policy extensively on military services military spouses have a big vote in with the spouse and so with a plethora of retirement options that are available now even more so there's a lot of incentives to maintain service and stay in the service but if the military spouse is struggling in their employment with multiple relocations they may not want their spouse to stay in the military for even moves having unemployment unemployment rates for military spouses are estimated at four times the national average according to BLS 38% of military spouses earn less than their counterparts we have to address military spouses employment increasing employment opportunities for military spouses will quality our courses retain important talent and maintain your military business we are leaning in on this and if we look at our vision statement the vision statement came on board and then I came in as his deputy we make sure to call out military spouses specifically and our revised vision statement the vision statement for DOF is to enable all veterans transition services and military spouses to reach their full potential in the workplace it's absolutely important to look at the whole family unit as we move past the pandemic in our nation we are excited to see that the unemployment rate for veterans is so low the July numbers have been in 2.7% but that doesn't mean we have to stop working it is that much more important that we get everything in place at some point it's something that will look like that and the economy can change and we can be ready one thing that we know is that the pandemic really highlighted and exacerbated existing economic inequalities and we can see that when we look at veterans who experience higher unemployment rates this is DAB and what we see is that for veterans with a 60% or higher disability rating they have a lower participation rate compared to a labor force compared to veterans with a disability rating of less than 30% disability rating less than 30% participational labor force 90% disability rating is over 60% participation of labor force 64% that is something we are leaning on and trying to help our Disabled Veterans program coordinators reach out to more veterans and underserved communities to make sure they have access to our services and we get the employment they need one of our three key priorities in DOFAS is promoting an advantage to equity inclusion and accessibility and underserved veteran communities to save veterans rural communities, Native American communities LGBTQ class communities just as involved women veterans and anybody who is conservative in our community that might need this assistance every veteran deserves a good job with families and standing wages recently the Department of Labor had an initiative called the Good Jobs Initiative you might have heard about it where all government leaders come together to work and how we can make sure that all American citizens have access to quality work and of course in our space we are focusing on veterans transition services service members and LGA spouses the labor dynamics show that Americans are leading jobs to get better jobs it is really job seekers are here right now so we want to make sure we capitalize on and make sure that our veterans have less opportunities there are different paths to get opportunities back in the click a long time ago when I was a recap counselor it was really challenging to look at things like apprenticeship and OJT apprenticeship was lesser known and the film was more focused on good quality work which not every veteran was interested in and many veterans who didn't want to go to college they didn't want to send them a classroom and learn about humanities and all the things they wanted to get to work and they wanted to be productive and have sustaining wages now we are in such a better place for the apprenticeship there are so many more opportunities in cybersecurity for example in industrial ways employers are no longer unnecessarily requiring higher education degrees for jobs that don't require we are working with all sorts of industries to get that transition into those industries we just hosted last week a clean energy round table that included Department of Energy industry associations, training providers and employers we also worked with the White House on the trucking challenge to get more Americans to take jobs in the trucking industry we were very clear in our involvement with all these initiatives that when we are talking about veterans they need good wages good benefits so we are happy to work with any industry that brings that to the table veterans which is why another one of our priorities is to leverage partnerships to enhance the performance of veterans partnerships such as the ones that we have a few with the A&E and other BSOs partnerships with federal government partnerships with other NSOs and non-profits partnerships with other organizations that we provide grant from in terms of the federal government Department of Labor vets enjoys a really great relationship with the Department of Veterans Affairs with the Veterans Benefits Administration also with the Veterans Public Administration I mentioned suicide prevention earlier we are partnering with PHA to provide suicide prevention training to all of our disabled veterans to prevent or raise questions we are doing the basic training that they already have training across the county into a learning initiative to not only help them recognize what a veteran might be at the crisis but also to recognize how to be more proactive and help that veteran and stay in touch with that veteran and provide the right level of service and the right level of support for girls quite often too the next thing I want to talk about the next priority I want to talk about is getting the military and civilian transition right we have so many industries in this case because there are veterans who have been out any amount of time but we also want to be proactive for that service member who is going to be getting out of the military if we can get as much of that right before they get out that would be just service only to us in terms of getting them on the right track and we know we have a limited opportunity we have a very limited opportunity we have a one day training course in the week long transition system it's basically mandatory although service is trying to get out of that course and there are two optional courses in the language track they want to go but it's a classroom experience if you've been through a classroom experience if you know it's not it's not enough it is not enough so we started the employment navigator in partnership by the way employment navigators are individual permanent counselors they were the one on one with that service member after they got on their track and what they do is they do the one on one service based on that service member where they're at and what they need and what they're interested in many times what we're hearing is they don't know what they're interested in they don't know what they should be interested in and they don't even know where to start the navigators help them where do you start start by getting your interest how much money you think you want to make and draw that out of the service member that's what they're doing but more importantly we know that once they leave that military installation we no longer necessarily have access to them maybe we got them into our system and it's a great thing to be ready for job center network and we can continue to serve them but sometimes they don't register so we want to make sure that we can open up to community partners and so the EMP program has vetted partners that are part of our program and those navigators learn about those partners and they can have a service member to target that makes the most sense for them based on their journey and their needs these partners can do anything from job matching they can be wraparound services mentoring there's a whole host of services that we bet these partners would and organizations like DAB and other CSRSA also partners and any partnership organization that you also partner with we have consistently so I have been here for 26 years and one of the things I do about transition is that consistently across all my time at VA it was always conservative to be back because I'd been drinking thermal fire booze there was so much coming at you it was really hard to absorb it all and then when you leave and the reality hits and now you're out there in the world of being a veteran I wish I could go back and spend a little more time thinking about it so I'll have to say we now have a health-based transition and this pilot is in five states right now and what we're doing is dropping veterans of any era an opportunity to come in and basically do a tap life experience but it's not exactly like tap because if you are going to sit for a full day course and you're a veteran and you've been out in the military you don't want to sit for an all day course maybe you don't need all the components of what tap has to offer but maybe you want to learn how to use within probably maybe you want to learn a better job in your new skills or maybe you just need to really ease up your resume and get it right or maybe you're starting to want to get a new occupation so this operating transition training pilot in these five states provides that experience it is both in person in the five states the classrooms across those states and it's also for so even if you're not in one of the five states you can still participate in the modular system so what we did is we broke up the importance of a tap from a job seeking perspective we broke it into the specific modules so you can register for all the modules or you can register for just the one that you want and so if you don't want to spend a whole day there thinking about what to do you just want to focus on one area so I wanted to mention this is a new initiative this is a new initiative so thank you in advance for getting the word out by the way I don't need to ask you in TAV to get the word out about PTT because it is born to market these types of services and make sure that you actually know the services know about them so the proactive piece is the employment advocate right so we've got them we're on the military installation with them we have two days served 5,327 service members and 365 military soldiers with OVTT so far it's much newer we've had 6,770 practice students attend 800 by in person modules and we've had 191% 110,111 of the virtual modules we are recruiting customer feedback and not only in the feedback but in terms of the statistics 60% satisfaction but we're also getting I would definitely tell my friends all these years about this program it's very beneficial it's increasing their confidence and their ability to do good jobs and some of the quotes that we get around the life changing these experiences have been they've really been inspirational and what we need us to continue to expand I talked about military spouses and the important role that they serve in that military members life we also recommend to me to target transition assistance programming to them as a separate audience we know they can sit in and attack customer service they're going through transitions but it's different that course is aimed at the service members to transition the military service spouses experience is different so we have the tactical program just for military spouses it's called transition employment assistance for military spouses I'm a team and the team's workshop is also modular inside military spouses with a resume with thin, navigating licensure capability and this from here to date we had 820 military spouses attend 200 separate modules of this training program and also a new thing that we did this past year is we created a movement warrior and caregiver employment workshop this is basically a TAP individualized session just for military warriors it focuses on things like disability accommodation self-advocacy and just really tailoring the TAP employment experience to the wounded warrior we work with DOL's Office of Disability Employment Policy we work with DAB and other BSOs we work with the Department of Veterans Affairs and also with the military services wounded warrior programs and we've got all of the concerns that everybody in the ecosystem knew about veterans having to navigate when they have disabilities and again we're proactive let's say 8214 let's get them while they're still there and get them on the right track it also includes caregivers so that again is just all the different ways that we are trying to deal with DOL events to not just be able to take just TAP but really leading into all the special populations making sure that TAYLA are programed to them and as much as possible we get one on one and I know that I'm over my time so I wanted to mention this to you and again thank you so much for your partnership, collaboration and for helping us to get the military disability transition right to reach our underserved veteran populations and to make sure that we enhance partnerships to the that I can take questions for as long as we have time to take questions I have a couple of questions we have a mic over here former member what five states California, Massachusetts let's see if I can use your floor from memory there are times that I have to memorize and there are times that I've used the memorization California Massachusetts and you know of course there are times that I didn't have a podium and everybody's staring at me here it is okay, here we go California Pennsylvania, Texas Massachusetts and North Carolina here we are here we are and I'm Duke Berge the virtual service operations retire on me one I just wanted to say that in the last five years I've been retired things within DOL the keys of navigating, particularly for a very small company quite a minor that I helped start when I got out to improve drastically partnerships with DAD and organizations made it so much better I did have a couple questions that many of them and the first one would be in regards to it's that we had a 26% employment rate in our company with veterans so we focus the county has to show us that they're going to be at least two veterans for every position it's very focused on that and we want to push towards the spouses as well I think some of my friends came back much first off than I am in regards to the how do we report when I do look at it from the business side is DOL planning on shifting so that it's easier because when I do say apply for the higher beds or I apply for other things I can only report on my veteran numbers that veteran spouse is a nice thing if that makes sense is there any changes being thought on benefits for businesses because we all know that that's what we'll drive businesses higher than spouses nice to us a certain of my way being able to do something with it goes far oh no I totally agree and absolutely one of our policy areas that we are working on and I can only share so much specifically in that literature it's about Christina and you're right even in federal employment it's the same thing when I was at BA and now at DOL when we try and determine how many of those military spouses are being employed we don't have the systems to be able to track that so it is something we're looking at from a policy view what can we do to make a difference in that space in addition to serving the military spouses how do we serve the employer side to make sure that Milton's rights are protected first of all in terms of non-discrimination but also one of the ways we get the credit of the agency and our military spouses and we're also working on that in DOL programming because there are some challenges and it's over we're working with lawmakers to take a look at that program and my second long term is that I know that DOD owns the program if we use skill bridge but it's been very successful throughout the industry, particularly the military industry and is there any possibility of getting veterans spouses who can get involved in that and there are huge rumors on the industry that skill bridge is funded through which obviously on the veterans program I can make budget choices about whether I try to leverage past my own you expiring next harvest is there any word on that in particular and if apprenticeships like that can be used to help I know that there have been some legal legislation in the past that would really expand for rental military spouses and our apprenticeships with DOD we know some of the challenges that they've done but we don't see skill bridge going away in fact we've been speaking to to increase the opportunities that some of these members are using skill bridge and the number of employees that are reaching in and making skill bridge opportunities happen because they realize that we don't need to wait for that service to get up in the military these are G.I. folks that are veterans to grade who need to get them now I was just at in Massachusetts and it was amazing walking through their factory and they put out all the veterans to talk to me and there were a few that had just been used skill bridge a couple were still active to transition down and this has a mission like that they felt going right to the military into an organization that was providing to the military was just amazing so we recognize the value of skill bridge DOD recognizes the value of skill bridge it really does help all of our veterans do their jobs thank you guys for what you do we have to move a lot so Miss Devlin can get on the road but she may be able to answer a question on the way out but before she goes we want to present her with a small token of our appreciation of helping the military in the road so it's definitely happening to me and Anthony our encourages the military we're going to move right along here to the program so I don't get to have big John over here to take any of his time so our employment department is made up of we just didn't instantly get to more employees so this slide wasn't updated in time but myself, Brian Burgos was the running assistant of national employment directors Mary Hunter employment specialist she's also our company that deals with a lot of the companies that contact our employment department and she works with them to integrate them into wherever they want to come in and whether they want to partner up with us on job fairs or whether they want to be filmers so we deal in a nice way we have about 340 companies so she's very busy in that regard she's dedicated to our mission of helping active duty to our reserve employee members better to their spouses to care for their employment to their creation to use those kind of tools I'm going to go through these slides as quickly as we are running out low on some time so we work directly with the veterans and the lawyers we work directly with the PRN Department of Labor those are very important those are the local individuals embedded in the local communities that can help veterans and new spouses with direct contact to a higher management piece that wants to hire veterans we do job fairs of course we have outreach, other outreach efforts such as webinars and things like that and we have a host of employment resources on our website jobs.eab.org I won't go through this whole slide of course we want to ensure that when you're transitioning from the military or you're already a veteran or you're a spouse of a veteran we want to ensure that you have the tools and resources needed to embark on meaningful employment not just to get a job we want to ensure that meaningful employment equates to careers to ensure we are buying veterans in their spouses with the rare opportunity that they enjoy or they're interested we want to make sure they get trained to serve fun so there are a lot of different things that we do when we engage with the veterans and the spouses to ensure that they understand where they can go where they can train how they can link up with some of these companies and corporations that want to hire them and that's what we do day in and day out there's other resources on our website you'll see these tabs job fairs and the veterans' spouses employers hiring guide publications, entrepreneurship what we just acquired as everyone heard it's a great testimony as well as executive director very Justin Husky's comments yesterday that's a big deal we have a lot of service members and veterans that have creative minds they want to engage and integrate into society but they want to do it their way through their businesses so we're very happy to be able to offer the resources and information and also we're going to be conducting events that's going to enable them to bar an agency on what it takes to take their idea and make it happen and we're very, very proud to be able to do that we want our our web page is averaging about 5,000 minutes a month obviously we hope it continues to grow and provide our resources to be involved in the needs of the veterans and their spouses our job fairs are pretty robust it hasn't been as robust as it was prior to its opening so this year we'll do about 86 by the time it's done and that's a mixture of traditional job fairs as well as virtual events we have just a few kiosks that we give to them next year we haven't seen a few military bases next year so we're kind of hoping it's going to be a little more robust we're thinking it's going to be about 90 but we're going to do more military bases next year than we are virtual events and right now we have 200,000 soldiers every year that is a pipeline that's going to the field research program that's where we need to make sure we touch them before they get out of that community and let them know it's available to them and we also have the veterans and spouses section we have a veterans job search engine and that's recruiting military our corporate partner that maintains that and this guy and I are wondering if we have low unemployment rates 2.7% for veterans 3.4% for civilians if you look on this job work there's over 100,000 government officials so it's kind of interesting how that's happening we're trying to figure out how that can be there's so many employment opportunities available great reservations at least last year 47 million people bailed out of employment and we're still trying to figure out there were a lot of benefits so that is the question and we're just trying to answer it so we're going to make sure that every veterans, every spouses every service member has the ability to identify their next mission their next career so there's a lot a lot of jobs available right now and the search engine goes to a job board that is a veterans center which means only veterans in the separate service members can use it's not going to display the kinds of opportunities so it's veterans center it's employers that want to hire veterans because of the soft fields that we have veterans present the employment resources we have so we launched this last call taking the employer program to recognize those employers that hire entities that hire, train, and retain veterans in their spouses so this year we were we received about 24 we did have four or five on the period which was very very good we will continue to receive those I would encourage everyone in here to look at this website if you know of employment, operation or hiring entity that hires, trains, and retain veterans we've made it simple for you to apply through our website really really good to do so anybody can nominate a company I just ask this if you nominate a company ensuring to fill out the application when you need information to do our new diligence to ensure that we can follow up to make sure that they do hire, retain, and maintain the veteran workforce or even spouses in their workforce because we want to recognize them and we want to make sure that they get that recognition and they also feel good about getting things from the VAV the most prolific service organization country the same they are a veteran for it it's something everywhere it wants and they don't have to buy their ads like you do through the department speaking of the badges here they are so we have three categories small main and large they also received a award on stage like they did yesterday we also have self-categories that we provide digital badges for hiring, maintaining all those categories underneath that build that so it's very very important that we identify these employers we recognize them and right now the board wants designations on their websites to show that they are a veteran and these digital badges they get their digital badges to make sure that they all see their social network so the program is growing and it's evolving and we hope to see more applications throughout the years just not through the formal period through the school it's no present view so many nominations so the childcare you know we travel a lot of the country and we conduct these childcare on the grind and I kept on a lot of travel here and then we start getting in travel and I'll tell you we are time sponsors of all of these events so we have a booth up front where we engage with the veteran who is separating the service member from her spouse and they also have TSOs TSOs on those three bases that assist us in these job fairs so we are a veteran, her spouse or a separate service member comes to our booth not only are they getting deployment information they are getting information so it's a one-stop job and we are very very happy we can do that so we are participating in these events so this is very very good so we are also all over social media and our com speed does a great job of making sure that our information is pushed out on all of our channels and anybody can tag us and share and we want that to happen because the more information is out there the better the veteran's spouse is going to be actually linked up with that deployment opportunity or career opportunity and they say Marguerite in her remarks there's a lot of folks out there that are working better for better opportunities so these folks out there they are already employed but they are either not respected they don't feel like they are appreciated and they may be ungrateful so we want to make sure they are trained we want to make sure that they are not blinded that's our goal so job payers since the inception of our program in 2014 we've done a little this slide is probably about 3 or 4 short but over 825 job payers for sure and which is a big deal that's a lot of job payers we have 260,000 6,010 events almost 15,000 exhibitors depending on the events those are hiring veterans and right now we're seeing a lot of job offers come through we've engaged over 118,000 veterans and the spouse of the service members through these events that were the first groups to lead to see us coming in we want to touch all of them to make sure there were a P&B and both we offer them and the spouses as they navigate not getting weeded back into the fabric the society is very important that they have their own commission and we want to help them out and job offers we've seen a lot of job offers coming from these events 162,000 plus since the inception of the program that's a big deal that's a lot of work hiring veterans and getting job offers and some veterans at these events we've seen multiple job offers to the same candidates just going three or four hours so it's very robust there's a lot of job opportunities out there and the job seeker has a leverage there's no doubt about it remote work, hiring work salary, benefits they can be used right now because employers are quite frank they need quality employees so definitely the job seekers have the leverage at this time