A Vocational Evaluation Report Sample

Where This Sample Comes From

A new associate on a caseload — three weeks in, first solo referral, a blank document open on the screen — has almost always seen fragments of vocational evaluation reports before: a paragraph here, a table there, a senior counselor's finished PDF forwarded as "something like this." What's harder to find is a complete, section-by-section walkthrough that shows how the pieces fit together and why each one exists. That's what this sample is for.

Everything below is illustrative. The claimant, the injury, the employer, the wages, and the file number are fictional, built to show structure and reasoning — not to represent a real evaluation, and not to be copied into an actual case file as-is. By the end, you'll be able to look at your own draft and check it against a complete report skeleton: what belongs in each section, what a defensible finding sounds like, and where a jurisdiction-specific caveat needs to sit.

Why a Sample Vocational Evaluation Report Beats a Blank Template

A blank template tells you the headings. A vocational evaluation report sample shows you what actually goes under each heading — the density of the records-reviewed list, the tone of a functional-limitations paragraph, how a finding is phrased so it holds up under cross-examination rather than reading as a guess. Counselors who work from a populated sample tend to produce more consistent reports across a caseload, because the sample makes the unwritten conventions visible: how much interview detail is enough, how a transferable skills analysis gets summarized versus fully tabled, how an opinion is hedged without being hedged into uselessness.

Section 1: Referral Background and Reason for Evaluation

(Illustrative — file VR-2024-0143)

Referral received from [TPA/carrier name], dated [date], requesting an initial vocational evaluation to determine transferable skills and labor market access following a work-related lumbar injury sustained by the claimant, Jordan M., a 44-year-old former forklift operator. Date of injury: [date]. Claim jurisdiction: [state/province]. Referral question: (1) Is the claimant capable of returning to prior work with or without accommodation? (2) If not, what alternative occupations exist within current functional capacity, and at what earning level?

This section exists to fix the scope before anything else gets written. A vocational evaluation answers a specific referral question in a specific jurisdiction — reporting deadlines, voucher eligibility, and fee-schedule cadences differ by state and by province, so naming the jurisdiction here isn't a formality, it's what tells a later reader (adjuster, attorney, judge) which rules apply to everything that follows.

Section 2: Records Reviewed and Data Sources

A credible report lists what it's built on, not just what it concludes. The illustrative list here might include:

• Treating physician's functional capacity evaluation, dated [date]
• Employer job description for pre-injury position
• Wage statement covering the 52 weeks pre-injury
• Independent medical evaluation, if one exists in the file
• Education and training records (transcripts, certifications)
• Claimant's self-reported work history and vocational interview notes

Each entry should be dated and sourced. If a document is missing — say, no current FCE — the report should say so explicitly rather than working around the gap silently. A reviewer, attorney, or hearing officer reading the report later needs to know what the finding is and is not based on.

For structural guidance on this section specifically, see the initial vocational evaluation report format breakdown, which covers how much records-review detail is customary versus excessive.

Section 3: Vocational Interview and Functional Findings

This is where the claimant's own account enters the record: education, licensure, full work history back through the relevant look-back period, self-reported barriers, and — critically — the functional limitations as documented by the treating or evaluating physician, not as characterized by the counselor. An illustrative excerpt:

Claimant reports 11th-grade education, no GED, and 19 years of continuous employment as a forklift operator/warehouse associate for a single employer prior to injury. Per the treating physician's FCE dated [date], claimant is restricted to sedentary-to-light work, no lifting over 15 lbs, no repetitive bending, occasional sitting/standing alternation required. Claimant reports no computer literacy beyond basic smartphone use and expresses interest in "something with my hands, sitting down."

Note what this paragraph does not do: it doesn't diagnose, and it doesn't editorialize about the claimant's motivation or credibility. It reports what the interview and the medical record established, in language a physician, an attorney, and a judge can all read without translation.

Section 4: Transferable Skills Analysis and Labor Market Data

This is usually the longest section, and the one most vulnerable to sloppiness. The method: identify the claimant's transferable skills from prior work (using a Dictionary of Occupational Titles–to–O*NET/SOC crosswalk), match them against occupations within the claimant's current functional restrictions, and price those occupations against current labor market wage data.

ONET itself — the federal occupational database this crosswalk work draws on — covers 900 occupation profiles and more than 55,000 jobs, which is the breadth that makes a transferable-skills match defensible rather than anecdotal. (Includes information from ONET, used under CC BY 4.0; ONET is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.)* Wage figures pulled for a labor market survey typically come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, which is itself built from a probability sample of roughly 1.1 million establishments surveyed in semiannual panels — worth citing in the report so a reader understands the wage figures aren't a single employer's quote, they're a statistically constructed estimate.

A worked example, using illustrative round numbers only:

• Pre-injury wage: $19.50/hour ($40,560/year), forklift operator
• Post-injury functional capacity: sedentary-to-light, per FCE
• Transferable-skills matches within restriction: inventory clerk, quality control inspector, dispatcher
• Illustrative wage band for matched occupations: $15.75–$18.20/hour

The gap between pre-injury and matched post-injury wages is the wage-earning-capacity finding — the number that usually drives the recommendation in Section 6. This is arithmetic performed on the claimant's own file data; it is not a market-wide benchmark, and every figure above is a placeholder, not a real wage.

For the full mechanics of building this section, the vocational rehabilitation report template piece walks through TSA table formatting in more depth, and how to write a defensible vocational report covers how to phrase a wage-earning-capacity finding so it survives challenge.

Section 5: Findings and Recommendation

The findings section states conclusions plainly, tied back to Sections 3 and 4 — no new facts introduced here.

Based on the claimant's documented functional restrictions, transferable skills from prior work history, and current labor market data for the claimant's geographic region, it is my professional opinion that the claimant does not retain the capacity to return to work as a forklift operator, but does retain transferable skills applicable to sedentary-to-light occupations including inventory clerk and quality control inspector. Recommend vocational counseling and job placement services; retraining is not recommended at this time given transferable skills already present.

That single sentence — "it is my professional opinion" — is the whole report's center of gravity. Everything above it is the evidentiary chain that supports it; everything below it is what happens next. No software produces that sentence. A credentialed evaluator's judgment, license, and signature are what make it an opinion rather than a printout.

Section 6: Closure Considerations and Jurisdiction Notes

If the case is closing rather than opening, the report shifts to a different structure entirely — see the vocational rehabilitation closure report format for what that looks like — but even an initial evaluation should flag jurisdiction-specific mechanisms that may apply later. In California workers' compensation, for example, a claimant who cannot return to long-term employment due to permanent disability may qualify for the Supplemental Job Displacement Benefit, a $6,000 voucher toward education and retraining; this is California-specific and should never be assumed to apply in another state or province. Whatever jurisdiction a file sits in, confirm current voucher amounts, deadlines, and eligibility criteria with that state's workers' compensation board before citing them in a report.

Ongoing cases, meanwhile, typically require periodic status updates between the initial evaluation and closure — the progress report format covers what belongs in those interim filings so the file stays consistent from evaluation through closure.

Building Your Own Report Without Starting From Zero

A vocational evaluation report sample is useful for exactly this: seeing the whole shape before you write your own. But a sample you read once doesn't stay consistent across a caseload of thirty files. A shell that pre-builds the section structure — referral background, records reviewed, interview findings, TSA and labor market data, findings, recommendation, jurisdiction notes — and lets you drop in file-specific content each time is what keeps every report in a practice looking like it came from the same firm, whether it's your third report or your three-hundredth.

The Vocational Report Shell Bundle is built around this exact structure. Download it, and the next blank document you open won't be blank.