Summary: Despite legislation requiring the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to find suitable employment for disabled veterans and GAO reports urging VA to implement this requirement, VA continues to place few veterans in jobs. During the past five years, VA rehabilitated about eight percent of the 74,000 veterans eligible for vocational rehabilitation program services. Moreover, the characteristics of program participants are changing. For example, only about one in four veterans in the vocational rehabilitation program has a serious employment handicap, and this ratio has been steadily declining. Moreover, VA lacks data on the cost of providing rehabilitation services to individual veterans. GAO's review of more than 100 case files, however, showed that VA spent an average of about $20,000 on each veteran who gained employment and about $10,000 on each veteran who dropped out of the program. Generally, more than half of the total costs consisted of payments covering veterans' basic living expenses. GAO's analysis of data for the Department of Education's state vocational rehabilitation program shows that, during the past five years, state agencies rehabilitated 37 percent of the 2.6 million persons eligible for vocational rehabilitation services. Moreover, most program participants had severe disabilities. The states spent, on average, about $3,000 on each client who achieved employment and about $2,000 on each client who dropped out of the program; the state program does not cover client living expenses.
