Vocational Expert Reports

On behalf of its clients, the VLG often obtains industrial survey reports from private vocational experts. The VLG believes that industrial survey reports can be used as valuable evidence to support a veteran’s TDIU claim. For example, in many claims, a veteran establishes that he is unable to return to his former employment because of his service-connected disability. The question then becomes whether the veteran has the education, work experience, transferrable skills and adequate physical or mental ability to secure and maintain a different type of job. The VA often relies on their VA physicians to answer this question. But, in fact, vocational experts are the only ones who are qualified to provide an opinion on this issue. Vocational experts can evaluate the opportunities in the contemporary labor market against the veteran’s peculiar circumstances, offering an opinion as to the veteran’s potential for obtaining another job.

The VLG uses these opinions, known as industrial survey reports, to support a veteran’s claim of unemployability due to service-connected disabilities.