Wyoming
I am a 19-year military spouse. I have strived tirelessly to maintain employment over the last two decades having moved nine times while raising two children, and being a “single parent” during four deployments. As you can imagine, maintaining a career under these conditions is daunting at best; turning to freelance and independent contract work has allowed me to remain outside of the high 22% unemployment rate amongst my peers. The PRO Act 2021, or Protecting the Right to Organize Act, recently passed in the House, but the bill is Anti-Small Business and Anti-Military. According to the 2019 Blue Star Families Survey –– which provides a comprehensive understanding of the experiences and challenges encountered by military families –– nearly 48% or military spouses are self-employed, business owners, or are at least interested in entrepreneurship. When it comes to how this will affect military spouses, the CEO of Freedom Learning Group, Elizabeth O’Brian said it best, ‘The PRO Act will have a significant [negative] impact on military spouses, a population that is 92% female, if they lose the opportunity to pursue project-based work. We cannot afford to deny the paths of economic opportunity to a population that is dependent upon that flexibility.’”