Veterans filing disability claims this year ran into an agency moving faster than ever — and the Department of Veterans Affairs says it needs thousands more people to keep that pace up. The VA announced it will hire more than 2,000 additional claims processors in fiscal year 2027, adding to the more than 13,000 employees already working through the nation's backlog of veteran benefits claims, according to Soldier Systems and Stars and Stripes.
A Record Year for Claims
The hiring push follows a record-setting 2026 for the VA's claims operation. The department processed 3,111,399 disability compensation and pension claims in fiscal year 2026, breaking the previous record of 3,000,734 set just a year earlier, Stars and Stripes reports. New claims submissions climbed to more than 3.15 million for the year, up roughly 80 percent since fiscal year 2022, a surge the VA attributes largely to expanded eligibility under the PACT Act and growing awareness among veterans of benefits they're entitled to.
That volume has come with real progress on the backlog that has frustrated veterans for years. The pending claims backlog has fallen about 72 percent since January 2025, and the average time to a decision has dropped from roughly 141.5 days to 75.6 days over the same stretch, per the VA's own figures cited by Stripes. The American Legion noted this marks the second straight year the VA has broken its own claims-processing record.
Speed Versus Accuracy
Not everyone is celebrating the pace. The VA reports a 93.88 percent accuracy rate on decisions, its highest mark in three years, and a 60.1 percent grant rate on claims. But Notus reported that some accredited claims agents and VA employees say the push for speed is coming at a cost. "We're getting more decisions but they're not good decisions," one accredited claims agent told the outlet, describing internal pressure to move cases through quickly even when more review would help a veteran's case.
For veterans currently navigating a claim, the takeaway is practical: more processors are coming, decisions are moving faster than they have in years, but it's still worth having an accredited Veterans Service Officer review a claim before it's submitted, and worth appealing a decision that doesn't look right rather than assuming the first answer is final.
The new hires will specifically target veterans and transitioning service members for the claims-processor roles themselves, giving the VA's newest hires firsthand knowledge of the system they'll be navigating on behalf of others.
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