The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) recently announced that the annual national percentage of veterans in the civilian labor force for 2015 is 7 percent. The new number is a slight decrease from 7.2 percent and is based on 2014 end-of-year data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
OFCCP’s revised VEVRAA regulations implementing new affirmative action requirements of federal contractors and their subcontractors went into effect on March 24, 2014. At that time, OFCCP announced the national percentage of veterans in the civilian labor force as 8 percent. Since the final rule was implemented, the percentage has decreased from 8 percent to 7.2 percent. Now, employers responsible for complying with the regulations by having a written affirmative action plan should use the new 7 percent benchmark, or an independently derived benchmark as outlined in the regulations.
The benchmark is subject to change annually and will be published in OFCCP’s VEVRAA Benchmark Database. For more information on OFCCP’s veterans rule and other issues related to affirmative action requirements for construction employers, visit the Labor and HR Topical Resources section of the AGC website. The primary category is “EEO” and the secondary category is “Affirmative Action/EEO.” Logging-in is required to access all available resources.