Rhode Island National Guard veteran Laychhay Ung, of Cranston, attends the job fair at the mall.

Felicia Gilmette, an employment counselor for the state Department of Labor and Training, took a call one day in August at the Providence netWORKri Career Center about a job recruitment event. APG Security was looking for security guards to work at Rhode Island Hospital. The young man on the other end of the phone said he was interested, but he wouldn’t be able to make it to the career center on Reservoir Avenue.

“I said maybe I can help,” Gilmette said. “Then he told me where he was calling from. I said ‘You’re calling from Iraq?’ ”

He was. Steve LeBlanc, of Warwick, was serving as an MP in Iraq with the Rhode Island National Guard at the time. “I didn’t know what I was going to do as far as employment when I got home,” said LeBlanc, now 22. So he used computers in Iraq to go online and look for jobs in Rhode Island. As part of his search, he saw a posting for the APG jobs, and thought his military experience would be a good fit.

So he e-mailed his resume to Gilmette, who made sure it got into the right hands at APG. When LeBlanc got home in September, he interviewed with APG, took a training course in crisis prevention intervention, and is now working as a security officer at the Emergency Department of Rhode Island Hospital.

Thomas Underhill, executive vice president for APG in Rhode Island, said the company appreciates a military background, finding that the demeanor and discipline instilled by the armed forces is a good fit with the corporation. “They do terrific,” he said of veterans hired by the firm.

Gilmette said she was impressed by LeBlanc’s persistence and ingenuity. “I’ve had a lot of calls since I’ve been working here, but this is the first and only I’ve gotten from Iraq,” she said.

LeBlanc is a success story.

For many other Rhode Island veterans, finding a job has not been easy. With an unemployment rate of 9.3 percent, they are looking for work in a very tight job market.

“There’s just not a lot of hiring going on,” said Johanne Washington, executive director of the Rhode Island Veterans Action Center. Washington said some veterans are going back into the armed forces to support their families.

“I tell my guys to search the Internet every day,” said Brenda Tetreault, a veterans representative at the career centers run by the state Department of Labor and Training. “You have to go out, keep looking, be very pro-active. Be positive even if you don’t feel positive . . . it’s tough out there, for everybody.”

According to the state Division of Veterans Affairs, in 2006 there were 89,000 veterans, of all ages, in Rhode Island. Nearly 80 percent, about 69,000, had served during a time of war. Stephen Durst, Rhode Island director of the U.S. Department of Labor VETS (Veterans Employment and Training Service), said the total number has probably dropped to 80,000 today. The decline, he said, partly reflects the mortality rate of the World War II generation and veterans who have left the state.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, citing statistics from the Defense Department, said that as of April 30 last year there were 4,121 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from Rhode Island.

Durst said every state receives annual grants from VETS, with Rhode Island getting $568,000 for fiscal year 2009. The money finances the Transition Assistance Program, a five-day seminar in making the transition from military to civilian life, which military personnel receive just before they leave the service. The money also finances veterans representatives who work in the one-stop career centers run by the Department of Labor and Training.

Because of retirements among state employees, Durst said, right now there are only two veterans representatives working, out of five positions. Durst said the state is working on filling those vacancies.

According to figures compiled by the Department of Labor that measure employment outcomes by state, for the period ending March 3, 51 percent of veterans who came to Rhode Island career centers looking for employment had found work in the three months after they had received job services. The national average is 61 percent.

On Nov. 14, the Department of Labor and Training held a job fair designed for veterans, although open to nonvets as well, at the Warwick Mall. The job fair attracted about 500 people.

Among those at the fair was Evan Nielsen, 42, a technical sergeant in the Rhode Island National Guard who had been in Kuwait from January through May. Nielsen, 42, is still on active duty while awaiting surgery for a hand injury. He said he had been working for a company that remodeled stores, but with the current state of the economy there wasn’t much demand for retail remodeling.

Nielsen, who had worked in power production in the Guard, said he was hoping to use his experience in the military to do something different. He said he was disappointed in the job fair, because even those employers who showed up weren’t necessarily doing much hiring.

“They’re all saying ‘We don’t have anything available now, but we’re taking applications.’ It’s kind of disappointing, actually,” he said.

Cox Communications and Gem Plumbing and Heating said they didn’t have openings, but were taking names. UPS was looking for only seasonal driver helpers. “We were swamped all morning.” said UPS employment supervisor Joan Lariviere. “A lot of people are looking for full-time [jobs] but we just don’t have that to offer right now.”

There were some companies hiring, if you had the right skills. McLaughlin Research Corporation, in Middletown, for example, had openings for electrical engineers, an environmental compliance specialist, an IT manager and a logistician.

Senesco Marine was looking for welders, shipfitters, heavy equipment mechanics. “A lot of people say they have the skills, but until you test them, you never know,” said human resources manager Joe Matarese.

The U.S. Postal Service had openings only for highly specialized positions — electronic technicians and mail processing equipment mechanics.

Addison Jureidini, 25, of Providence, was checking out the employment booths at the job fair. He got out of the Army in 2005 after serving in Iraq and Kuwait. He also worked as a civilian contractor for the Navy and then the Army, working in security.

“I’ll take anything available. I’m not picky,” he said. Jureidini said he’s sent applications to the police departments in Providence and New York City, but hasn’t heard anything yet.

Jureidini said when he was between stints as a civilian contractor, he sent out about 20 job applications. The only one who called back was a Dunkin’ Donuts shop where he had worked as a teenager when he was going to high school in Middletown.

Ken Ferrebee, 26, of Warwick, finished his Navy service in June 2007. In the Navy, he had worked as a gas turbine electronics technician. He has a job now, but he’s looking to find something where he can use his technical skills. He said a company called SEA (Systems Engineering Associates) Corp., in Middletown, which was at the job fair, seemed promising.

“The job market right now is very tough, and it’s getting a lot tougher,” Ferrebee said.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, last year the national unemployment rate among veterans who served in the armed forces since September 2001 was 6.1 percent, compared with an overall national unemployment rate of 4.4 percent. Young male veterans between 18 and 24 who served during that period, known as Gulf War-era II, had an unemployment rate of 11.2 percent last year, slightly more than the jobless rate for young male non-veterans (10.5 percent.) The unemployment rate for members of the National Guard or Reserve was significantly less, at 2.6 percent.

More alarming numbers come from a report released in March by the Veterans Affairs Department. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the report found that young veterans between 20 and 24 not in the labor force — because they couldn’t find jobs, stopped looking for jobs or went back to school — jumped from 10 percent in 2000 to 23 percent in 2005. Half of those who did find work, the report found, earned less than $25,000 per year.

The current economic crisis is too recent to be reflected in most federal job figures when it comes to veterans. But those who work with vets say they are feeling the effects. A story in Tuesday’s New York Times said new veterans are being hit hard by unemployment, the housing crisis and longer waits for disability claims.

“We’re seeing a dramatic increase in the number of calls and e-mails we get [from vets] looking for jobs,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “People come back and expect to find they have marketable skills, but no one is hiring . . . the economy is hitting the American people hard, it’s hitting veterans even harder.”

asmith@projo.com