Find the best area to stay in Maui with this guide to the island’s top regions, including Wailea, Kaanapali, Paia, and Hana. Compare neighborhoods and discover where to stay based on your travel style.
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Planning a trip to Kyoto? Discover the best areas to stay in Kyoto, from the historic streets of Gion and Southern Higashiyama to lively Downtown Kyoto and scenic Arashiyama. Compare the top neighborhoods, find hotel recommendations, and choose the perfect base for your travel style.
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The Fourth of July and the signing of the Declaration of Independence severed ties with Great Britain and thus receives its due attention.
But it was on July 5, 1776, that the former colonials got down to the nuts-and-bolts of governing and winning a war.
One of the first orders of business that day for members of the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia was getting cooking kettles to the militia. The Committees of Inspection and Observation were told to “furnish a good kettle to every six men, and give all the assistance in their power, that the said militia be well armed and equipped, and march with the greatest expedition,” according to the Journals of the Continental Congress at the Library of Congress.
It was also resolved “That a chaplain be appointed to each regiment in the Continental Army, and their allowance be increased to thirty three dollars and one third of a dollar a month.”
Members then had to deal with the always grumpy John Adams, who got approval to send a copy of the Declaration to Mary Palmer, the daughter of family friends of the Adamses in Braintree, Massachusetts, along with a somewhat-snotty note now preserved by the Massachusetts Historical Society.
“I will enclose to you a Declaration, in which all America is remarkably united,” Adams’ letter read. “It completes a Revolution, which will make as good a Figure in the History of Mankind, as any that has preceded it — provided always, that the Ladies take Care to record the Circumstances of it, for by the Experience I have had of the other Sex, they are either too lazy, or too active, to commemorate them.”
On the morning of July 5, the members of the Congress also ordered copies of the Declaration printed by John Dunlap to be distributed throughout the former colonies.
The thought also occurred to them that somebody ought to tell the troops what they were fighting for now that independence had been declared.
And so John Hancock, the Boston merchant-smuggler and president of the Second Continental Congress, was authorized to tell Gen. George Washington to have the Declaration read to his fledgling army at formations.
In his letter to Washington, Hancock wrote that “the Congress have judged it necessary to dissolve the Connection between Great Britain and the American Colonies, and to declare them free and independent States; as you will perceive by the enclosed Declaration, which I am directed to transmit to you, and to request you will have it proclaimed at the Head of the Army in the Way, you shall think most proper.”
Washington was in New York at the time, warily watching the buildup near the harbor of a British armada that would grow to 400 ships and 32,000 British regulars and Hessians. He scheduled the reading of the Declaration for July 9.
“The Honorable the Continental Congress, impelled by the dictates of duty, policy and necessity, having been pleased to dissolve the Connection which subsisted between this Country, and Great Britain, and to declare the United Colonies of North America, free and independent STATES,” Washington’s General Orders for July 9 read.
“The several brigades are to be drawn up this evening on their respective Parades, at six [o’clock], when the declaration of Congress, shewing the grounds and reasons of this measure, is to be read with an audible voice.”
Washington hoped that movement would “serve as a fresh incentive to every officer, and soldier, to act with Fidelity and Courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his Country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms.
“And that he is now in the service of a State, possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest Honors of a free Country.”
Things did not immediately go according to plan, however.
Washington was livid when a mob of troops and locals rioted, storming down Broadway to Bowling Green where they toppled a statue of King George III and lopped off its head.
Learn how to pack like a pro with our ultimate carry-on packing guide. Discover smart packing techniques, lightweight travel essentials, the best carry-on bags, and space-saving tips to help you travel lighter, avoid checked baggage fees, and fit everything you need into a single carry-on.
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Many veterans know their own monthly disability compensation amount down to the dollar. Far fewer know what that number looks like at scale — how much the VA pays out in total, where that money concentrates, and how quickly it’s growing. The FY2025 VBA Compensation Report puts real numbers behind those questions, and the picture it paints is bigger and more concentrated than most people assume.
But why does it matter?
Understanding where VA disability dollars go (which VA rating levels absorb most of the budget, which states receive the most, and how fast the system is growing) helps you calibrate your own expectations and strategy.
If most of the money is flowing to veterans with a 100% VA rating, that tells you something about where the VA’s own resources and attention are concentrated, and where the gap between a partial rating and a full one really matters financially.
This article breaks down the numbers: the national total, how VA disability compensation is distributed by rating tier, what the data shows about state-level totals, and what it means for your own claim strategy.
In FY2025, the VA paid $174.05 billion in disability compensation to 6,338,253 veterans (an average of $27,461 per veteran for the year). Veterans rated 100% disabled made up less than a third of all recipients but received $93.8 billion of that total, or 53.9% of every dollar the VA paid out. Florida alone accounted for $13.1 billion in annual compensation, more than any other state.
-VA Claims Insider
As of September 30, 2025, the VA was paying disability compensation to 6,338,253 veterans nationwide, a total of $174.05 billion for the fiscal year. That works out to an average of $27,461 per veteran annually — roughly $2,288 a month, though individual payments vary widely based on rating percentage and number of dependents.
That total isn’t static. The compensation rolls grew by 345,286 veterans compared to FY2024 (a 5.8% increase), while 476,802 veterans filed as new recipients during the year. The dollar total is growing even faster than the recipient count, for a straightforward reason: the veterans joining the rolls, and the veterans already on them, are accumulating more service-connected disabilities and moving toward higher combined ratings over time.
The single biggest driver of the FY2025 compensation total is the 100% disability tier. Veterans rated 100% received $93.8 billion of the $174.05 billion paid out — 53.9% of the entire budget — even though they represent well under a third of all recipients. Put another way: the remaining $80.2 billion (46.1% of the budget) is spread across every veteran rated anywhere from 10% through 90%.
That concentration is intensifying, not stable. The table below shows how the recipient count at each rating tier changed between FY2024 and FY2025. Every tier from 70% and above grew. Every tier from 30% and below shrank.
| Rating | FY2024 Recipients | FY2025 Recipients | YoY Change |
| 100% | 1,547,842 | 1,847,449 | +299,607 (+19.4%) |
| 90% | 621,930 | 679,688 | +57,758 (+9.3%) |
| 80% | 595,721 | 627,300 | +31,579 (+5.3%) |
| 70% | 545,452 | 562,930 | +17,478 (+3.2%) |
| 30% | 335,731 | 320,674 | -15,057 (-4.5%) |
| 20% | 371,767 | 355,239 | -16,528 (-4.4%) |
| 10% | 877,391 | 861,702 | -15,689 (-1.8%) |
Source: FY2025 VBA Compensation Report, five-year rating distribution tables. The 40%–60% tiers are omitted here because the underlying report did not publish complete year-over-year recipient counts for those levels; the report does note that 40% ratings declined 2.5% year-over-year, consistent with the broader pattern above.
The most recent data shows a clear leader in state-level veterans benefits: Florida veterans received $13.1 billion in annual disability compensation, more than any other state. Texas, California, North Carolina, and Virginia round out the top five states by total compensation volume.
That ranking tracks with veteran population size and cost of living more than with any state-specific VA policy — Florida, Texas, and California are simply home to large numbers of veterans, many of them retirees who relocated after service. If you’re comparing your own state’s veteran benefits landscape, this compensation ranking is a useful companion to our guide to the best veteran benefits by state, which covers the state-level programs — property tax exemptions, tuition waivers, and similar — that stack on top of federal compensation.
>> See Veterans Benefits by State
The $174.05 billion in veteran compensation doesn’t include Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) — the separate benefit paid to surviving spouses, children, and dependent parents of veterans who died from service-connected conditions. DIC added another $11.51 billion in FY2025, reaching 549,324 recipients nationwide. New DIC claims are growing faster than veteran compensation itself — a trend significant enough to warrant its own look at what’s driving it.
>> Learn more about VA Survivor Benefits
Two forces are pushing the total budget higher year over year: more veterans are joining the compensation rolls (up 5.8%), and the veterans already on the rolls are accumulating more service-connected disabilities and moving into higher rating tiers.
Total service-connected disabilities on file grew 11.6% in FY2025 — nearly double the rate at which the veteran population itself grew. That gap between “more veterans” and “more disabilities per veteran” is the real engine behind the rising dollar total, and it’s worth understanding on its own terms.
These numbers aren’t just background context — they’re a rough map of where the VA’s compensation system rewards precision. The jump from 90% to 100% is worth more to your household budget than any other single step in the rating scale, which is exactly why that tier shows the steepest year-over-year growth.
If your combined rating has been sitting in the 70%–90% range for a while, the most direct paths forward may be the ones already available in your claim file: previously unrated secondary conditions, or a condition that has worsened enough to justify a VA rating increase.
PRO TIP: Easily see what an increase could do to your monthly compensation with our VA Disability Calculator.
The VA’s $174.05 billion disability compensation system is larger, faster-growing, and more concentrated at the top of the rating scale than most veterans realize. Over half of every dollar paid out goes to the roughly one-in-four veterans who have a 100% VA rating, and that concentration grew sharply in FY2025. Whether you’re evaluating your own claim strategy or just trying to understand the system you’re part of, the rating tier you’re sitting at matters more to the math than almost anything else in your file.
You served. You earned the right to file. You earned the right to be heard. And you earned the right to pursue every VA benefit you legally qualify for.
So here is the real question:
Do you have the VA rating you were given, or the VA rating you truly deserve?
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In FY2025, the VA paid $174.05 billion in disability compensation to 6,338,253 veterans nationwide, an average of $27,461 per veteran for the year.
The FY2025 average was $27,461 per year, or roughly $2,288 per month. Individual payments vary significantly based on your combined rating percentage and the number of dependents on your award.
Florida leads with $13.1 billion in annual compensation, followed by Texas, California, North Carolina, and Virginia, according to the VA’s most recent state-level data.
Veterans at 100% receive the maximum monthly rate, and the FY2025 data shows this group grew 19.4% year-over-year — far faster than any other rating tier. That combination of the highest per-veteran payment and the fastest-growing group is why 100%-rated veterans account for 53.9% of the entire compensation budget.
No. VA disability compensation is not subject to federal income tax, regardless of your rating percentage. For a full explanation of how this affects other benefits and tax filings, see VACI’s guide to whether VA disability is taxable.
Your payment is based on your combined disability rating and the number of dependents (spouse, children, dependent parents) on your award. The VA publishes updated payment charts each year — see the 2026 VA disability pay chart for exact monthly amounts by rating and dependent status.
Eric has written and worked in the field of Veterans Disability since 2020 and enjoys writing educational content for the veteran population. His prior work has been published in the Official Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). He holds a Degree in Health and Exercise Science.
This post was originally published on this site.
The closely watched jobless rate for the post-9/11 generation of veterans bumped up from 4.1% in May to 4.8% in June as the nation’s ability to create new jobs took a nosedive, according to a monthly jobs report released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The report also showed an increase in the unemployment rate for all veterans from a remarkably low 3.2% in May to 4.1% in June, despite the continued strong showing of women veterans in the labor market.
The BLS data showed that the jobless rate for women veterans has come down from 7.1% in March to 4.4% in April and 3.3% in May before ticking up to 3.6% in June, which was still well below the month’s unemployment rate for the general population (4.1%).
For many analysts, the most concerning figures in the BLS report were the weak numbers on job creation. Total nonfarm payroll employment changed little in June by adding 57,000 jobs, about half of what analysts predicted.
A main concern was the hiring slowdown in the healthcare sector, which has consistently been setting the pace for adding jobs through both the Biden and Trump administrations.
The BLS report said that employment in healthcare added 22,000 jobs in June, “but at a slower pace than the average monthly gain over the prior 12 months of 38,000.”
Leisure and hospitality employment, meanwhile, usually a strong performer, declined by 61,000 jobs in June, “reflecting weaker than usual seasonal hiring,” the report said. Thus far in 2026, “employment in the industry has shown little net change.”
Overall, “it’s a pretty disappointing jobs report,” Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union, told Military Times in a phone interview.
“Tech is still strong,” she said, “but healthcare has cooled off a little bit,” and “wages are not keeping up with inflation.”
Long noted increases in the unemployment rates for veterans but added that the data is from a relatively small sample.
“That’s why you see a lot of movement” in the numbers for veterans, she said, adding that the “verdict is still out” on whether artificial intelligence will be the major job killer that many expect.
The AI impact on the jobs market is “not showing up in the data yet,” Natasha Sarin, a former assistant secretary at the Treasury Department under the Biden administration, told MS Now, which could be the result of new research showing that the expected impact of AI on white collar entry-level jobs may have been overstated.
The Trump administration sought to put the best face on the BLS report, showing a weakening labor market. Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, posted that the report “reinforces that the American labor market remains solid thanks to President Trump’s economic agenda.”
He called attention to the report that the nation added 3,000 manufacturing jobs in June, although that was down from 7,000 manufacturing jobs added in May.
New acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling stated that “Manufacturing employment, which was devastated under the Biden Administration, continues to grow as we secure historic investments and reshoring of critical industries,” despite the loss of 4,000 manufacturing jobs cited in the BLS report.
“President Trump’s America first agenda continues to provide greater wages for workers and certainty to the sectors which will fuel the next 250 years of U.S. economic security,” he added.
Despite the claims, the BLS data showed that wages were not keeping up with inflation. The report showed that wages rose 3.5% in June, while the annual inflation rate through May noted in a separate BLS report (the Consumer Price Index) rose by 4.2%.
In recent years, Massachusetts has taken significant steps to improve care for seniors, most notably the Act to Improve Quality and Oversight of Long-Term Care. In a recent Risking Old Age in America podcast, Rep. Thomas M. Stanley, Co-chair of the Elder Affairs Committee, describes this initiative as well as further steps in the works. These include creating a family caregiver commission, licensing home health agencies, and working towards universal long-term care insurance.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation:
Risking Old Age in America (ROA): You have been working [to make improvements] across the whole continuum of care from nursing homes [to] assisted living facilities to home healthcare. Please talk about the legislature’s initiatives in these areas.
Rep. Thomas M. Stanley: In 2024, the governor signed the long-term care reform bill into law. This was the first major legislative update of nursing homes and assisted living residences in over 25 years.
It increases transparency and oversight of nursing homes through new suitability standards for owners and operators. It requires a review of the civil and criminal litigation history of owners and operators; and we put in place tools for the Department of Public Health to monitor and take punitive action against facilities, including increased fines and creating the ability to appoint a temporary manager to oversee a struggling facility.
It expands the suitability reviews of management companies including any [firm] with at least a 5-percent stake in a nursing facility. The law also establishes the long-term care workforce and capital fund to help address the workforce crisis in nursing homes. Money from the fund can be used for Certified Nursing Assistant training grants, career ladder grants for Licensed Practical Nurses, and also leadership training.
The law gives assisted living facilities the ability to offer basic health services, like wound care, eye drops, and medication distribution to their residents.
ROA: The Dignity Alliance [a senior advocacy group]…[has said] state supervision and enforcement of nursing facilities is…not tough enough, that there might be fines and other penalties on the books, but nobody’s applying them to nursing homes that don’t meet their obligations. It sounds like the ability to put them into receivership under the new legislation may be the remedy that’s needed.
Stanley: That’s correct. Under the old rules you would end up in the situation of really punishing or fining a nursing home and end up having it going to foreclosure. In that case, where are the residents going to go? The new law allows the Department of Public Health (DPH) to get in earlier and work with them so that they understand what the DPH is looking for in terms of quality of care and so forth. They can take care of the facility and all the residents so they don’t go astray.
ROA: So the DPH might have felt that it was between a rock and a hard place because if they enforced the regulations, they might lose the nursing home.
Stanley: [Yes]…and the nursing homes, by and large, were not letting them know that they were having certain problems. So this allows the DPH to get in earlier, understand what’s going on and help them make adjustments so that they can right the ship.
Stanley: The state of Washington is really in the forefront of looking down the road to provide for some type of revenue stream…for folks to be able to afford their home care or [other] long-term care needs. So we’re modeling our program after theirs and we’re learning from their mistakes and successes.
ROA: That’s the Washington Cares Fund?
Stanley: Yes, exactly. Last session Senator Jehlen and I worked together to get $500,000 in the state budget for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services to hire an independent firm to conduct the actuary study of various public, private and public-private long-term support service financing options. They hired Milliman to conduct the study. [The full study is available here.]
How it would work in a nutshell is that a public…insurance program would be funded via a payroll tax. After individuals pay into the program for a certain number of years, a vesting period, they would become eligible. And as they age and require long-term support services, they can apply for benefits under the program. There are countless ways to design the program, increasing or decreasing the benefit amount or…the vesting period, determining what the benefit can be used for – home care, assisted living or even paying family caregivers. We have filed legislation to establish a commission to discuss the results of the actuary study and the feasibility of a public long-term care financing program in Massachusetts and potentially recommending a model that works.
ROA: It sounds like this would help a lot, but one question I have about it is that if there’s a vesting period where you have to pay in for a number of years before you can become eligible for the benefit, would it only be available for people who are continuing to work during that time?
Stanley: That’s definitely something that has to be discussed by the commission, but everyone has to contribute and the 10-year vesting period is necessary to get enough money into the program to make it sustainable.
Listen to our entire conversation here.
For more from Harry Margolis, check out his Risking Old Age in America blog and podcast. He also answers consumer estate planning questions at AskHarry.info. To stay current on the Squared Away blog, join our free email list.
Social Determinants of Health (SDoH), also known as social drivers of health or social risks, are the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. They are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life (World Health Organization.). SDoH include factors such as unemployment, insecure housing, legal involvement and lack of social support.
SDoH have been shown to adversely impact both mental health outcomes and suicide risk across populations, including U.S. military members and veterans. Our CVN data offer additional insight into these challenges and their implications for military community mental health care.
Figure 1. Percent of clients identified as at clinically elevated suicide risk
CVN network data. Findings may not be representative of other populations or care settings.
References:
Maury, R. V., Roman, J. L. R., Stone, B., & Harvie, J. Y. (2025). Military spouse employment landscape: Trends, barriers, and opportunities.
Pietrzak RH, Fischer IC, Nichter B, et al. Social Determinants of Health and Suicide Risk in US Military Veterans. JAMA Psychiatry. 2026;83(3):315–318. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.3883
G Wilson, M Hill, M D Kiernan, Loneliness and social isolation of military veterans: systematic narrative review, Occupational Medicine, Volume 68, Issue 9, December 2018, Pages 600–609, https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqy160
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For one U.S. Army soldier-turned-contractor, the lure of a processed lemon poppy seed poundcake seemingly proved too tempting to resist.
Joseph Lavar Davis, 47, was convicted of stealing over $1.1 million worth of the military’s pre-packaged Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, in El Paso, Texas, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Texas, said Tuesday, in a scheme involving three other co-defendants and more than 200 pallets of the shelf-stable rations.
MREs, typically sealed in distinctive brown branding, are used to feed troops basic nutrients in austere situations and training exercises.
Known for their energy content as opposed to their taste, the emergency rations can be eaten hot or cold and are notorious for producing foul flatulence and blocked bowels — oftentimes contributing to the MRE’s other moniker of Meal, Refusing to Exit.
According to a statement from the office, the group used false paperwork to acquire MREs from Fort Bliss and Davis created false requests, rented vehicles to move the calorically dense provisions, fixed prices and collected compensation in the operation.
The FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division agents executed a search warrant on a civilian warehouse in August 2020 and found scores of pallets of MREs that an investigation showed was a holding facility for a company that purchased the rations from people who had pillaged them from Fort Bliss, the statement said.
Davis was named in the February 2025 indictment — along with the three others — for conspiracy to commit theft of government property and a substantive count of theft of government property between Feb. 4, 2020, and Aug. 12, 2020.
The office said that Davis learned the Army’s food procurement process while working in food service supply in the service. When he retired, the statements said, he got a job as a civilian contractor in a similar position.
“Joseph Davis betrayed the very country he once swore to protect in an effort to satisfy his own selfish ambition and a jury of his peers held him accountable for it,” said U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons.
Davis served as a culinary specialist in the Army from May 1998 to May 2018, according to an Army spokesperson. He left the service at the rank of sergeant first class.
