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He doesn’t need the Labor Department to tell him unemployment hit a 25-year high. Reginald Draughn’s fiancee could have told him so.

That was her just now, on his cell.

“She heard about some jobs at Lorillard. Got to get a jump on it,” said Draughn, 46, as he tucked the phone back in his pocket.

“The pickings are slim.”

After 22 years in the Army, the Philly native is pounding the pavement again, working temps, looking for a food service job, probably at a nursing home. At every interview, the going price drops a little lower.

“Would you take $7.50?” the last interviewer asked him, but by the time he got out the door, it was $7.15. So Friday morning, Draughn stopped by the N.C. Employment Security Commission on Elm-Eugene and checked in with the veterans’ section.

But the fact is, other than a vets-only job fair this coming Wednesday at VFW Post 2087 up the street, service veterans go to the back of the line, like anybody else.

Is that fair?

“What’s 'fair?’ ” mused Fred Benton, an unemployed Marine Corps vet. At age 53, he’s made these rounds a bit longer, but has at least one pun left in him: “Fare,” as he put it, “is $1.20 on the bus.”

Evidenced by the long lines to get in the front door at the state unemployment office last week, the U.S. Labor Department reported that nationwide, another 122,000 more workers filed for unemployment in the first three weeks of October, bringing the number of jobless to 3.84 million.

Apart from the obvious argument for employers giving vets preferential treatment — what’s that word I’m looking for, “gratitude?” — there are business reasons, too, observes Richard Johnson, a disabled veterans’ jobs counselor at the ESC.

“When it comes to doing a job — computers, driving a truck — a lot of our veterans are well-qualified,” said Johnson, a 30-year Air Force vet, who believes employers tend to value degrees over experience. “In the military, they may have gone to an 8- to 12-month school to learn a job, and they’re well-versed. Even if they don’t have a degree.”

For Chuck Mays, a Navy vet from the Vietnam era, working on aircraft carriers and being stationed in Iceland for a year was life-changing. His job brought a level of responsibility he couldn’t have dreamed of at that age in civilian life.

“Here’s this multimillion-dollar aircraft, and the pilot owes his life to some 19-year-old three decks below,” Mays, now 55, recalled of being a young crewman. “If there’s not enough steam coming through that catapult, that pilot’s in trouble.”

But Mays, an unemployed mental health community support worker, said in all the years since, no prospective employer has ever told him his military service was a plus.

To Reginald Draughn, the unemployed food service worker, that runs counter to the Army’s “Be All That You Can Be” recruitment pitch.

“It’s a crock. I’ve got 22 years (in service) and I’ve still got to haggle with people for a job,” he said.

“You would think that with people who have enough discipline to go out and defend the country, you’re probably looking at a better employee, more punctual, more productive.”

And just like every Veterans Day, we’ll have lots of nice observances and commemorations this Tuesday. But if you’re an employer with any job opportunities on the horizon, Wednesday may offer the most meaningful event of all: a vets-only job fair, free to employers and applicants.

It’s not too late to get a table.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com