Washington: U.S. President Barack Obama has announced new initiatives to get veterans back to work. More than 850,000 American veterans remain unemployed, Obama said Monday at the White House. The new initiatives titled "Veteran Gold Card", "My Next Move for Veterans" and "Creating a Veterans Job Bank" are mostly aimed at helping unemployed veterans in their job searching efforts, including better access to job-hunting services. "We're here today to try to take some steps to better serve today's veterans in a rough economy," Xinhua quoted Obama as saying. "Even though the overall unemployment rate ticked down last month, unemployment among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan continue to rise," he said.