Since February 2026, a separating staff sergeant with a TS/SCI can look up your company’s own veteran-hiring numbers before she reads your careers page. The Department of Labor’s portal at data.dol.gov carries filed VETS-4212 contractor reports, which had never been public. 38 U.S.C. 4212(d)(3) told the Secretary of Labor to “publicly disclose” them. Anyone can download the file.

Why is a public data file a stronger signal than a badge?

Because the employer wrote the numbers, filed them under a federal reporting obligation, and no longer controls who reads them. A badge is a claim; a filing is a count.

Check the fields first. 41 CFR 61-300.10(a) requires workforce headcount “by job category and hiring location,” and separately “the total number of new employees hired by the contractor during the period covered by the report, and of such employees, the number who are protected veterans.” New hires are a location total, not a job-category breakdown. Veteran status can come from self-identification, voluntary disclosure, or actual knowledge. You elect the snapshot: any pay period end from July 1 to August 31, or December 31 with EEOC approval for your EEO-1.

Three dollar figures for VEVRAA coverage are all correct, depending on your document. The statute reads $100,000, as does the printed 7-1-24 edition of the regulations; the FAR figure was $150,000 until 90 FR 41872 raised it to $200,000 effective October 1, 2025. The law did not change: the FAR Council indexes acquisition thresholds for inflation under 41 U.S.C. 1908. Quote $200,000 and date it. But if your contracts sit between $100,000 and $200,000, do not settle that from an article. The regulations OFCCP enforces still print $100,000, so that call belongs with your contracts counsel. Nothing here is legal advice.

Two limits. DOL has not published the launch in citable form; the February 18 and February 23, 2026 dates come from contractor-compliance counsel, who also put the veteran coverage at two filing cycles, 2021 and 2025. Most contractors are not in the file.

Does any of this obligate a contractor to hire veterans?

No. VEVRAA imposes a listing duty, a written affirmative action program, a benchmark, and recordkeeping. The hiring decision stays with the employer.

Start with the duty badge talk never reaches. 41 CFR 60-300.40 applies “to every Government contractor that has 50 or more employees and a contract of $100,000 or more,” which must “within 120 days of the commencement of a contract, prepare and maintain an affirmative action program at each establishment,” update it annually, and produce it “within 30 days of a request from OFCCP.” Not having one is an ordinary compliance-evaluation finding, and a resulting debarment also disqualifies you from the medallion under 20 CFR 1011.120.

The equal opportunity clause at 41 CFR 60-300.5(a) requires a covered contractor to “immediately list all employment openings” with the state employment service delivery system, “at least concurrently with the use of any other recruitment source or effort.” Post to your own site Monday and the state system Friday and you have missed it. One qualification we have a stake in: routing an opening to “a privately run job service or exchange will satisfy the contractor’s listing obligation” if that service feeds the state system so it can give priority referral. Confirm your vendor does: VEVRAA and the mandatory job listing.

The carve-outs cut the other way. “All employment openings includes all positions except executive and senior management, those positions that will be filled from within the contractor’s organization, and positions lasting three days or less.” Do not read that first exception off a job title. The clause defines executive and senior management by a four-part conjunctive test: salaried at not less than $455 per week, primary duty is management of the enterprise or a recognized subdivision, directs two or more employees, and holds hire-or-fire authority. A program manager who runs one contract and cannot hire or fire fails it, so list the requisition: OFCCP job posting requirements.

The benchmark is a target, not a line you can fail: 41 CFR 60-300.45 says “Quotas are expressly forbidden.” The national figure is 5.1%, effective July 30, 2025, carried by compliance trackers rather than a citable DOL page, and OFCCP publishes late, so check it. Wider context: OFCCP compliance.

Which signals can a transitioning service member actually check?

Four things get called military-friendly credentials. One a candidate cannot check.

What does a HIRE Vets Medallion actually prove?

More than the others: its criteria sit in regulation, not in a methodology document a publisher can revise.

Under 20 CFR part 1011, a large employer has 500 or more employees. Gold requires veterans to be at least 7 percent of prior-year hires, 75 percent 12-month retention of a defined cohort, a veteran resource group and a leadership program. Platinum raises those to 10 and 85 percent and adds a dedicated HR professional, differential pay for Guard and Reserve employees on active duty, and tuition assistance. Section 1011.115 relaxes the first. A dedicated professional means one “dedicated exclusively” to veteran hiring, but “large employers who employ 5,000 or fewer employees need not have” one; at that size a single HR professional “whose regular work duties include supporting the hiring, training, and retention of veteran employees” satisfies it. An 800-person contractor that rules itself out of Platinum here has misread the rule. Medium employers, 51 to 499, get an easier alternative test, so a medium Gold and a large Gold are different claims, and only W-2 employees count.

Read the retention criterion carefully, and only that criterion this way. It measures veterans hired “during the calendar year preceding the preceding calendar year,” so a 2026 Gold medallion covers 2024 hires who stayed through 2025. The hiring-rate criterion beside it is one year old, not two: the 7 percent tests “all employees hired during the prior calendar year,” so the same medallion also certifies veterans were 7 percent of 2025 hires. Applicants must meet every criterion, so the badge lags by two years on retention and by one on hiring.

Now the number quoted out of context. For the 2025 award year, published March 10, 2026, DOL issued 15 large-employer Platinum medallions nationwide alongside 873 other awards. Fifteen looks like a brutal filter until you print the adjacent column: VETS received 891 applications and approved 888, closer to self-certification than contest.

Fees are $120, $250 and $640 by size, per the program FAQ; against what a cleared hire really costs, a rounding error. Applications open January 31 and close April 30.

One eligibility rule contradicts itself in public. Section 2(d) of the HIRE Vets Act, at 20 CFR 1011.210 and still printed in the 4-1-25 edition, says “an employer who receives a HIRE Vets Medallion Award for 1 calendar year is not eligible to receive” one “for the subsequent calendar year.” Read literally, nobody wins twice running and a one-year gap means nothing. DOL’s own awardee file says otherwise: of the 888 recipients for 2025, 497 also appear on the 2024 list. Do not read a gap as a verdict, and do not bank on a repeat. The fee is nonrefundable under 20 CFR 1011.300(d), so if you won this cycle, ask VETS in writing before paying again.

Is the Military Friendly badge worth anything?

More than its critics allow, less than the employers buying the media package believe.

In its favor: the survey “remains free for all participating organizations,” and the benchmarks are published. One screen cuts in the badge’s favor. A company is negatively scored or disqualified if within 12 months it has “an outstanding claim(s) case or violation under investigation by the US Departments of Labor or Defense, or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” or “has been debarred from participation in federal contracting.” For a cleared contractor, the most decision-relevant line on the page. The published methodology says EY “independently evaluates the completeness and accuracy” of the scoring, then adds that EY’s services “are advisory in nature.” A check on arithmetic, not an audit opinion.

The deeper problem is the standard’s arithmetic. An employer must satisfy at least three of nine benchmarks and its own results decide which three; the list repeats a line, so eight tests are distinct. Two companies wearing an identical badge may have met non-overlapping criteria. Money enters where we compete, and calling it a branding layer would have flattered us: the paid tiers bundle unlimited job postings, candidate search, resume downloads, virtual job fairs and ad impressions. That is a job board sold to the employer we sell to.

What does a SkillBridge MOU commit you to?

The hardest number an employer signs, and one a candidate cannot check.

The 2025 SkillBridge MOU defines high probability of employment as “75% or higher of Service members who successfully complete the program receive a qualifying offer of immediate post-service suitable employment with an 85% or higher offer rate as the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) goal.” The next sentence: “Federal, state, and municipal agencies are exempt from the 75% KPI.” DoD publishes no per-employer results, so no candidate can check them, but the standard is not unpoliced. Section 4.2.22 makes the provider report at 90 and 180 days “the number of participants offered qualifying employment” and the number who accepted, and 5.8 lets DoD terminate “without written notice” for “non-compliance with program requirements.”

The intake commitment is what employers price wrong. Section 4.2.1 sets an annual floor by size, one candidate a year below 200 employees rising to “at least 5 candidates per year” above 1,000, and 4.2.2 requires “a minimum of suitable, available full-time positions equal to or exceeding the number of participating service members at any given time.” Real requisitions, held open, every year. The program runs within 180 days of separation, which lines up with time-to-billing on a cleared hire. On foreign ownership, print the whole sentence: “Foreign-owned educational or commercial institutions, or businesses owned, operated, or controlled by a foreign government, or foreign government entities, are not eligible.” The line before says foreign-owned businesses registered with a U.S. state may be eligible, so a FOCI-mitigated subsidiary reads as eligible. The grammar is ambiguous. Ask MCTO before you spend.

Be straight about the economics. The host must “provide neither compensation nor gifts to Service members for services performed while participating in the program.” It may subsidize subsistence, lodging and travel on two conditions, both required: the subsidy is “offered to all similar training participants without regard to military affiliation” and “specifically and clearly identified by the SkillBridge provider in their SkillBridge application.” Deciding mid-cohort to cover lodging fails the second, which is where a well-meaning host breaks the rule. The member stays on active duty, so the employer gets months of work without payroll.

Where does a job board fit in all of this?

At the bottom of the evidence stack, and we should say so, since we run one. Posting a requisition on ClearedJobs.NET proves nothing about how an employer treats veterans after the offer is signed. A medallion’s retention criterion and a SkillBridge offer commitment are stronger evidence than any sourcing channel, ours included. Name the cheaper channel too: the state employment service delivery system costs nothing, you already have to use it, and it gives protected veterans priority referral. For a junior cleared requisition aimed at recently separated candidates, that listing plus a SkillBridge cohort is the better buy. We earn a fee on reach into the cleared population already employed and not browsing a state job bank: where to post cleared jobs weighs the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does VEVRAA require federal contractors to hire veterans?

No. 41 CFR 60-300.5(a) states that “the listing of employment openings does not require the hiring of any particular job applicants or from any particular group of job applicants.” The duties: list openings with the state employment service delivery system concurrently with other recruiting; prepare a written affirmative action program within 120 days of contract start and update it annually if you have 50 or more employees; set and document a benchmark; keep records.

What is the current VEVRAA hiring benchmark?

5.1%, effective July 30, 2025, replacing 5.2% effective March 31, 2024. OFCCP publishes late and no successor had issued as of this writing, so confirm the live number. 41 CFR 60-300.45 states that “quotas are expressly forbidden.”

Did Executive Order 14173 end veteran hiring obligations for contractors?

No. EO 14173 revoked Executive Order 11246 but states it “does not apply to lawful Federal or private-sector employment and contracting preferences for veterans of the U.S. armed forces.” VEVRAA is a statute at 38 U.S.C. 4212 and sat outside that revocation. OFCCP’s proposed rule at 90 FR 28485 is pending, with no final rule as of July 2026.

Can a candidate really look up our veteran hiring numbers?

Partly. The portal carries headcount by job category and location, plus new-hire totals by location and how many were protected veterans. New hires are not broken out by job category. Coverage reported at launch was two filing cycles, 2021 and 2025, so absence proves nothing.

What to do before the next filing closes

Two dates belong on a calendar. Your VETS-4212 window runs August 1 to September 30, and since February 2026 the filing is readable by anyone, so fix the numbers. The medallion window for 2026 has closed. The next opens January 31, 2027, and 20 CFR 1011.205(a) counts only actions “taken prior to December 31 of the calendar year prior to the calendar year in which applications are solicited,” meaning calendar 2026. Retention is locked on your 2025 cohort. The veteran share of hires is not: it is running now, and you have until December to move it. One honesty note. We found no survey measuring how many transitioning clearance holders check a medallion, a filed report or an MOU; our read that the sophisticated ones will is a judgment, falsifiable by a study showing they ignore all three. What is not a judgment: the record is public and the criteria are numeric. A candidate’s first question is still whether you will sponsor a clearance.