The Hiring Our Heroes initiative hosted nearly 100 job fairs across the country in its first year. For year two, the Chamber says it’s boosting that to 400. Ross Cohen is a senior director at the Chamber. He said when the program began last March, veteran unemployment had hit crisis proportions.

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched Hiring Our Heroes, recognizing that there’s over a million unemployed veterans and that we had a responsibility to these men and women returning from overseas to connect them to good careers throughout the private sector, but also recognizing that we owed it to the private sector to provide extraordinarily talented men and women to their companies.”

The Labor Department says that, as of January, the number of unemployed veterans was just over 800,000.

Cohen says the Chamber will host two job fairs in Houston. The first will be on April 5, the second on April 13. Houston is home to 22,000 veterans, giving it the second-largest veteran population in the US, as well as the country’s largest number of post-9/11 vets.

The first Houston job fair will be held on Apr. 5 at Minute Maid Park. The second will be held at Apr. 13 at the Westin Galleria. The Chamber is expecting about 60 employers at each event.

Confirmed participants include Capital One (who is cosponsoring Hiring Our Heroes with the Chamber this year), Union Pacific, and CVS. More details are available at http://www.uschamber.com/hiringourheroes.