The unemployment rate for veterans who served on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces at any time since September 2001 – a group referred to as Gulf War-era II veterans – declined by 1.8 percentage points over the year to 7.2 percent in 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week.

The jobless rate for all veterans, at 5.3 percent, also declined from a year earlier.

In addition, 29 percent of Gulf War-era II veterans reported having a service-connected disability in August 2014, compared with 16 percent of all veterans.

In 2014, there were 3.2 million veterans who had served during Gulf War era II.

Twenty percent of these veterans were women, compared with 4 percent of veterans from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam era. Nearly half of all Gulf War-era II veterans were between the ages of 25 and 34.

This information was obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of about 60,000 households that provides data on employment and unemployment in the United States.

Data about veterans are collected monthly in the CPS; those monthly data are the source of the 2014 annual averages presented in this news release.

In August 2014, a supplement to the CPS collected additional information about veterans on topics such as service-connected disability and veterans' current or past Reserve or National Guard membership.

Highlights from the 2014 data:

– The unemployment rate for male veterans declined to 5.2 percent in 2014. The rate for female veterans edged down to 6.0 percent.

– Among the 573,000 unemployed veterans in 2014, 59 percent were age 45 and over. Thirty-seven percent were age 25 to 44, and 4 percent were age 18 to 24.

– Veterans with a service-connected disability had an unemployment rate of 5.9 percent in August 2014, the same rate as for veterans with no disability.

– Nearly 1 in 3 employed veterans with a service-connected disability worked in the public sector in August 2014, compared with nearly 1 in 5 veterans with no disability.

– In 2014, the unemployment rate of veterans varied by state, ranging from 1.4 percent in North Dakota to 8.5 percent in Maryland.