For decades, military spouse employment policy has revolved around a single, stubborn statistic: unemployment.
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.
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