Corporate grants to veteran programs fell from 1% to 0.3% of giving
A Rand Corporation report released Wednesday found that federal contractors are largely failing to meet government-set hiring targets for military veterans, with the largest publicly traded contractors employing veterans at less than half the federal benchmark in 2025.
Among federal contractors in the S&P 500, 2.4% of new hires were veterans in 2025, compared with the 5.1% target the federal government sets each year. Among other contractors, veteran hiring was higher, at 4.1%, though still below the target. The targets are not quotas; contractors must instead design plans to show how they intend to recruit ex-service members. Nudged by successive administrations, employers rushed to create hiring and retention programs for former military personnel after the Sept. 11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Hiring is well below what companies are claiming they’re aspiring to and what the actual government is setting as a benchmark. Both of those are red flags,” said George Zuo, an economist at Rand and author of the report.
The report also examined corporate foundation giving. Grants to veteran-related programs by corporate foundations fell from roughly 1% of annual giving in 2014 to around 0.3% in 2023, according to Rand’s analysis of corporate disclosures, foundation tax records and federal contractor filings. Companies are doing little to track and report progress on hiring and retaining veterans, the report found.
The Rand report concluded that companies are disclosing less information about programs for veterans, suggesting that the programs themselves have likely shrunk. That is creating a disconnect, Zuo said, between public statements of support for former service members and the concrete programs and outcomes for veterans once they transition to the private sector.
The report ties the retreat to the broader decline in diversity, equity and inclusion programs since President Trump took office. One of his first acts was an executive order that took aim at what the president called “illegal discrimination” in the workplace, referring to initiatives that incorporated preferences for workers from particular groups, such as mentorship programs for women. The order specifically exempted programs with preferences for U.S. military veterans.
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the government agency tasked with overseeing federal contractors, has shrunk significantly over the past two years, and the White House has proposed eliminating it entirely. The agency is no longer conducting audits or reviews of veteran hiring, a change from the first Trump administration, said David Cohen, co-founder of the Institute for Workplace Equality, a trade association for federal contractors.
The veteran labor market overall has tightened. Veteran unemployment has fallen from near double-digit levels in 2011 to below 4%. Employers continue to face challenges recruiting former service members, said Eric Eversole, president of Hiring Our Heroes, a veteran-focused program of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Corporate support for service members remains strong, he said. “Companies have invested heavily and I think a lot of that has to do with what we see — servicemembers are trainable, very resilient, and they can solve problems,” he said.
The Rand report was sponsored by American Corporate Partners, an organization that matches military veterans working at large employers with mentors inside those companies. It was founded by former investment banker Sid Goodfriend, whose office was a block away from the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and who saw the second airplane hit the South Tower. “Every multinational corporation with assets and people around the globe should be supportive of the military community,” he said.