By Rovaryn Digital · August 19, 2026 · 8 min read
The Problem This Hub Solves
Your newest CRC hire spends her first two weeks bouncing between a workers' comp deadline calendar, a stack of O*NET printouts, and three different Word templates, trying to piece together how a transferable skills analysis actually gets built — and she still isn't sure whether the Specific Vocational Preparation (SVP) level she just wrote down would hold up if opposing counsel asked her to defend it. That scramble is not a training failure. It is what happens when the pieces of a transferable skills analysis — the method, the occupational data, the worksheets, the jurisdiction-specific context — live in a dozen different places instead of one.
This page gathers those pieces. It does not replace the deep-dive articles linked below; it maps the territory so you know which piece to read next, in what order, whether you are building your first TSA, training a new counselor, or refreshing your method before a deposition. By the end, you should know exactly where to go for the method, the data, the worksheet, and the jurisdiction-specific caveats a transferable skills analysis requires.
What a Transferable Skills Analysis Actually Does
A transferable skills analysis identifies which of a worker's acquired skills — from past jobs, training, and education — carry over to occupations that fit their current medical, physical, or functional restrictions. It is the analytical bridge between "this person can no longer do their prior job" and "here is a labor-market-grounded, defensible list of what they can do instead." Start with what a transferable skills analysis is if you need the foundational definition and the disability, workers' compensation, and long-term-disability contexts where it is used.
The output is never a guess. A rigorous TSA is built from documented worker traits — skills, aptitudes, education, physical demand tolerance — cross-referenced against standardized occupational data. That data anchoring is what separates a transferable skills analysis from an informal résumé review, and it is also what makes the analysis an estimating and case-organizing tool rather than a certified opinion: the credentialed counselor's judgment and signature, not the software or the worksheet, are what make it defensible.
The TSA Method, Step by Step
Every TSA follows a recognizable sequence: document the worker profile, identify the highest-SVP occupation(s) the worker has performed, extract the transferable skills from that work history, apply medical and functional restrictions as filters, and generate a labor-market-grounded list of feasible occupations with wage data attached. The full walkthrough — including how to sequence each step so it holds up under review — is in how to perform a transferable skills analysis.
Two steps deserve special attention because they are where most defensibility problems originate:
- Skill extraction. Pulling the actual transferable skills out of a job history, not just the job titles, requires understanding how DOT and O*NET describe worker functions, not just tasks.
- Restriction filtering. Applying exertion levels, SVP ceilings, and skill requirements as filters against a labor-market occupation list is a mechanical process once the data is organized — but it is easy to do inconsistently by hand across cases. The exertion, SVP, and skill occupation filtering guide covers the filtering logic in depth.
Worksheets, Templates, and a Worked Example
Method knowledge only becomes usable practice when it is captured in a repeatable worksheet. The transferable skills analysis worksheet walks through the fields a worksheet needs — worker profile, work history with SVP and exertion coding, skill extraction, restriction filters, and the resulting occupation list with wage citations — and why skipping any of those fields tends to produce a report that cannot be reconstructed later if a case is reopened or challenged.
Reading about the fields is useful; seeing them populated is more useful. The transferable skills analysis example works through a full case end to end with realistic (not real-client) inputs, so you can see how a worker profile becomes a filtered occupation list becomes a report section.
If you want a ready-made, fillable version of that worksheet rather than building your own from scratch, the TSA Worksheet Pack packages the fields discussed above into a practice-ready template.
The Occupational Data Underneath Every TSA: O*NET, DOT, and SVP
None of the method above works without standardized occupational data, and this is where most new practitioners lose time. The U.S. Department of Labor's Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) was the original source of SVP and exertion coding; ONET is its modern successor and the database most practices reference today. The ONET database currently covers 900 occupation profiles spanning more than 55,000 jobs in the U.S. economy — information from ONET used under CC BY 4.0; ONET is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. That scope is large enough to support almost any TSA, but it also means a counselor needs a reliable way to move between the older DOT codes still cited in many case files and the current O*NET/SOC structure.
SVP (Specific Vocational Preparation) levels explained is the reference for understanding what each SVP level actually represents in terms of training time, and why SVP ceilings are one of the primary filters in restriction-based occupation matching. If your case files still reference nine-digit DOT codes, the DOT occupation codes list is the reference point for looking up or cross-checking a specific code.
Wage data is the other pillar. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program — the source most TSAs cite for occupational wage figures — is built from a probability sample of roughly 1.1 million establishments surveyed across semiannual panels of about 186,000 to 189,000 each. That sample size is worth knowing because it is part of what makes an OEWS-sourced wage figure defensible in a wage-earning-capacity argument: it is not a convenience estimate, it is a large, methodologically documented federal survey.
Crosswalks and Filtering: Turning Raw Data into a Defensible List
The single most technical piece of TSA work is the crosswalk — moving a worker's documented DOT-coded work history onto current ONET/SOC occupational data so that filtering and wage-matching can happen on modern, maintained information. The O*NET-DOT crosswalk explained covers how that mapping works, where it is imperfect (DOT and ONET do not correspond one-to-one), and how to document the crosswalk decisions you make so a reviewer can follow your logic later.
Once occupations are crosswalked, job matching through the transferable skills crosswalk covers how skill-matching logic ranks and filters candidate occupations — and how that ranking connects back to the exertion, SVP, and skill filters covered earlier. Treat these three pieces (crosswalk, filtering, job matching) as one continuous workflow rather than three separate topics; in practice, they run together inside a single TSA.
Where TSA Fits: SSDI, Workers' Comp, and Vocational Expert Testimony
A transferable skills analysis is not one document type — it is a method that gets applied differently depending on who is asking and why.
In Social Security disability determinations, TSA logic informs whether a claimant can perform work that exists in the national economy given age, education, and work history — relevant against a backdrop of 7,231,147 disabled workers receiving SSDI benefits as of December 2024, and 8,614,659 total disability beneficiaries once disabled adult children and disabled widow(er)s are included. Transferable skills analysis in Social Security disability covers how the analysis is used in that context and where it differs from a workers' comp application.
In workers' compensation, TSA output often feeds directly into jurisdiction-specific benefit calculations. California is a useful illustration of why jurisdiction discipline matters: California's Supplemental Job Displacement Benefit provides a $6,000 voucher for education and retraining for injured workers who cannot return to long-term work due to permanent disability — but that figure and eligibility structure are California-specific and must never be generalized to another state's workers' comp system. Every state (and Canadian province) sets its own rules, deadlines, and benefit structures; confirm the current figures and requirements with the relevant workers' compensation board before relying on any number in a filing.
In litigation and forensic settings, the TSA becomes testimony support. Transferable skills analysis for the vocational expert covers what makes a TSA cross-examination-ready: consistent data sourcing, documented crosswalk decisions, and a report structure that lets a credentialed expert defend every step of the method under questioning.
Building Your Own TSA Reference Library
If you are new to this work, a reasonable reading order is: start with the definition, move to the step-by-step method, study the worked example, then branch into the occupational-data pieces (O*NET/DOT crosswalk, SVP, filtering, DOT codes) as you need them for a specific case. Bookmark the SSDI and vocational-expert pieces for when a case actually requires that context — they are easier to absorb once the base method is familiar.
Rehabilitation counseling remains a specialized field: the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification reports that more than 15,000 Certified Rehabilitation Counselors currently practice across the United States, Canada, and several other countries, out of more than 40,000 professionals who have gone through the CRC certification process since CRCC's 1974 incorporation. Median annual wages for rehabilitation counselors were $46,110 in May 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — context worth knowing if you are scoping staffing or fee structures around TSA work, though it says nothing about what a private practice should charge for a given case.
None of this replaces having a working worksheet in front of you the next time a referral lands on your desk. Download the TSA Worksheet Pack to get the field structure discussed throughout this hub in a ready-to-use format, and use it alongside the deeper articles above as your practice builds its own TSA reference library.