How PVQ-TM Works

A plain-language guide for attorneys, adjusters, and anyone who needs to understand how we measure post-injury earning capacity.

1The Big Picture

When a person is injured and can no longer perform the work they did before, a critical question arises: what can they still do, and what will it pay? That question sits at the heart of personal injury litigation, workers' compensation claims, and Social Security disability cases.

A Vocational Expert (VE) answers it by performing what is called a Transferable Skills Analysis, or TSA. Think of a TSA as a structured matching process: we take the skills someone learned in their old jobs, compare them to the requirements of hundreds of other occupations, filter out anything they physically or mentally cannot do after their injury, and identify the jobs that remain. Those surviving jobs, and their wages, tell us what the person's post-injury earning capacity looks like.

PVQ-TM is the system that performs this analysis. It is not a black box. Every formula is published. Every data source is a government database. Every step can be reproduced by an opposing expert. This page explains, in plain language, what happens from start to finish.

2What We Start With

Before the system can find matching jobs, we need four categories of information about the injured person:

Demographics

Basic information about the person: age, education, and where they live. Age matters because Social Security has stricter rules for older workers. Location matters because job availability varies by region.

Past Relevant Work (PRW)

The jobs the person held over roughly the last 15 years. For each job, we record what they actually did day to day, what tools they used, what skills they developed, and how complex the work was. We use a government measure called SVP (Specific Vocational Preparation) to rate complexity. An SVP of 1 means the job can be learned in a short demonstration. An SVP of 8 means it requires years of training, like a surgeon.

Skills From Those Jobs

Not everything a person does at work counts as a transferable skill. Under Social Security policy, a transferable skill must come from work that was at least semi-skilled (SVP 4 or higher) and must involve real judgment or technique learned over more than 30 days. Being friendly or showing up on time are valuable qualities, but they are not transferable skills in this analysis. Knowing how to operate accounting software, read blueprints, or manage inventory records are.

Post-Injury Profile (What the Doctor Says)

Based on medical records, physician reports, or a Functional Capacity Evaluation (FCE), we build a profile of what the person can still do after their injury. This profile tracks 24 specific traits across three groups:

6 Aptitudes — reasoning ability, math skills, language ability, spatial perception, form perception, and clerical perception.
11 Physical Abilities — strength level (sedentary through very heavy), finger dexterity, manual dexterity, motor coordination, climbing, stooping, reaching, and more.
7 Environmental Tolerances — ability to tolerate cold, heat, humidity, noise, dust, fumes, and hazardous conditions.

Each trait is rated on a simple 0-to-4 scale, where 0 means no capacity at all and 4 means full, unrestricted capacity.

3How We Find Matching Jobs: The Five-Step Process

With all the starting data in hand, the system works through five steps. Think of it as a funnel: we start with a wide universe of possible jobs and progressively narrow it down to the ones that are realistic for this particular person.

Step 1Document the Work History

We record every relevant job the person held, the specific tasks they performed, the tools and technology they used, and the skills they acquired. We cross-reference each job against the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) and the O*NET database to ensure we are using standardized occupational descriptions, not just the person's subjective recollection.

Step 2Search for Candidate Occupations

The system searches through more than 900 O*NET occupations to find ones whose skill requirements overlap with the person's work history. This is similar to how a job search engine finds matches based on a resume, but far more structured. We compare tasks, work activities, tools, materials, and knowledge areas. If there is meaningful overlap, the occupation becomes a candidate.

Step 3The Hard Gate: Physical and Mental Screening

This is the most important filter. For every candidate job, we compare all 24 traits the job requires against the person's post-injury profile. If the job demands even one physical or mental ability that exceeds what the person can do, that job is eliminated. There is no averaging, no partial credit.

For example, if a job requires medium-level strength (regularly lifting up to 50 pounds) but the doctor has restricted the person to sedentary work (lifting no more than 10 pounds), that job is out. It does not matter if the person is a perfect match in every other way.

Think of it like a doorway: you either fit through it or you don't. Being close to fitting does not count.

Step 4Rate the Adjustment Required

For jobs that survive the hard gate, we assess how much adjustment the worker would need to transition into the new role. We look at four dimensions:

Tools — Are the tools and technology similar to what they used before?
Work Processes — Are the day-to-day procedures similar?
Work Setting — Is the work environment similar (office vs. warehouse vs. outdoors)?
Industry — Is it the same industry or a completely different one?

This step is especially important for older workers. Under Social Security rules, workers of advanced age (55 and older) generally can only be directed to jobs that require very little or no vocational adjustment.

Step 5Check the Labor Market

A job that exists on paper but has no openings in the real economy is not a viable option. In this final step, we pull data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to verify that each surviving occupation has meaningful employment numbers, reasonable wages, and a future. We look at:

How many people currently hold this job nationally
What the job pays (median and percentile wages)
Whether the occupation is growing or shrinking
How many openings are projected

4The Four Scores

Each surviving occupation receives four scores. Together, these scores answer the question: how good a fit is this job for this particular person?

STQSkill Transfer Quotient

“How much do your old skills overlap with this new job's requirements?”

Scored from 0 to 100. A high STQ means the person already knows how to do most of what the new job requires. We measure this by comparing tasks, work activities, tools, materials, and knowledge between the old jobs and the new one. A score of 80, for example, means roughly 80% of what the new job needs, the person already brings from their prior work.

TFQTrait Feasibility Quotient

“Can you physically and mentally do this job given your limitations?”

This score works in two stages. First, it is a hard pass/fail: if any of the 24 traits fails, the job is eliminated entirely (see Step 3 above). For jobs that pass, the TFQ then measures how much margin the person has. A higher TFQ means the person's abilities comfortably exceed what the job demands. A lower TFQ means they just barely clear the bar. Think of it as the difference between a bridge rated for 20 tons carrying a 10-ton truck (comfortable margin) versus carrying an 18-ton truck (just barely safe).

VAQVocational Adjustment Quotient

“How different is this new job from what you're used to?”

Scored from 0 to 100, where 100 means the new job is essentially the same work environment, tools, and processes the person already knows, and 0 means everything is completely different. For most people, some adjustment is expected. But for older workers under Social Security rules, only jobs with very little adjustment (scores near 100) qualify.

LMQLabor Market Quotient

“Is this job realistic to get? Are there enough openings and does it pay enough?”

Scored from 0 to 100. This score checks whether the job exists in meaningful numbers in the real economy, whether it pays a competitive wage compared to what the person earned before, and whether the occupation is projected to grow. A job that is a perfect skills match but only employs 200 people nationwide would score low here.

5Combining It All: The PVQ Score

The four scores above are combined into one overall number called the Public Vocational Quotient (PVQ). The formula is:

PVQ Formula

PVQ = (0.45 x STQ) + (0.25 x TFQ) + (0.15 x VAQ) + (0.15 x LMQ)

In plain English, skill transfer counts the most:

45% Skill Transfer (STQ) — Can the person actually do the work based on their experience?
25% Trait Feasibility (TFQ) — How much physical and mental margin do they have?
15% Vocational Adjustment (VAQ) — How big a change is this from their prior work?
15% Labor Market (LMQ) — Does this job exist in sufficient numbers at reasonable pay?

Why Does Skill Transfer Get the Most Weight?

Skill transfer receives 45% of the weight because it is the central question in both Social Security policy and vocational rehabilitation: does the person already possess the skills needed to perform this other work? The Social Security Administration's regulations specifically define disability in terms of whether a person's skills transfer to other work that exists in significant numbers. If a person has the skills, the other factors matter. If they do not, the other factors are irrelevant.

The final PVQ score ranges from 0 to 100. A higher score means the occupation is a stronger match overall. The system uses PVQ to rank all surviving occupations from best fit to worst fit, so that the Vocational Expert and the attorneys reviewing the report can see, at a glance, which jobs represent the most realistic alternatives.

6The Earning Capacity Connection

This is where the analysis connects directly to the dollar figure at the center of most litigation: loss of earning capacity.

After the five-step process above, we have a list of occupations the person can realistically perform. Each of those occupations comes with wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including median wages and a full distribution (what the 10th, 25th, 75th, and 90th percentile earners make).

The wages for these viable post-injury occupations represent the person's post-injury earning capacity — what they can reasonably be expected to earn going forward. We compare that to their pre-injury earnings (what they actually earned before the injury) or their pre-injury earning capacity (what they could have earned).

The Simple Equation

Loss of Earning Capacity = Pre-Injury Earnings − Post-Injury Earning Capacity

If Jane earned $42,000 per year before her injury and the best jobs she can still do pay a median of $31,000, her annual loss of earning capacity is approximately $11,000. Over a working lifetime, that figure is multiplied by the number of remaining work years and adjusted to present value by an economist.

The strength of this approach is that every number in the equation is tied to verifiable data. The pre-injury earnings come from tax returns and employment records. The post-injury occupations come from the transferable skills analysis. The wages come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There is nothing subjective about the arithmetic.

7A Walk-Through Example

Meet Jane

Jane is 47 years old with a high school diploma and two years of community college coursework. For the past eight years, she worked as an Accounting Clerk at a manufacturing company, earning $42,000 per year. She processed invoices, reconciled accounts, managed vendor payments, and used QuickBooks and Excel daily. Her job was classified at SVP 6 (skilled work, requiring one to two years of training).

Six months ago, Jane injured her back in a car accident. Her orthopedic surgeon has restricted her to sedentary work only: she can sit for most of the day, occasionally walk and stand, and lift no more than 10 pounds. She has no restrictions on her hands, cognitive abilities, or communication skills.

Step 1: Documenting Jane's Work History

The system records Jane's Accounting Clerk position with all its details: accounts payable/receivable tasks, data entry, vendor communication, use of accounting software, spreadsheet analysis. Her SVP of 6 confirms this was skilled work, meaning her skills are eligible for transfer.

Step 2: Finding Candidates

The system identifies occupations whose tasks and tools overlap with Jane's experience. Candidates might include: Bookkeeping Clerk, Payroll Clerk, Billing Clerk, Budget Analyst, Insurance Claims Clerk, and others. The initial candidate list might include 30 to 40 occupations.

Step 3: The Hard Gate

Each candidate is screened against Jane's post-injury profile. Any job requiring more than sedentary strength is eliminated. A Warehouse Inventory Clerk that requires light-to-medium lifting? Eliminated. A Purchasing Agent that requires occasional travel and moderate physical activity? Eliminated. Jobs like Bookkeeping Clerk (sedentary, office-based) pass through.

Step 4: Adjustment Rating

For a Bookkeeping Clerk position, the system rates the adjustment as minimal. Jane would use similar software tools (QuickBooks, Excel), follow similar accounting processes, work in a similar office setting, and potentially stay in the same industry. Her VAQ score would be high, near 100.

For an Insurance Claims Clerk position, the adjustment is moderate. The tools overlap somewhat (she knows data entry and office software), but the work processes (processing claims rather than invoices), the setting, and the industry are different. Her VAQ would be lower, perhaps around 50.

Step 5: Labor Market Check

The system confirms that Bookkeeping Clerks employ over 1.5 million people nationally with a median wage of approximately $47,000. The Insurance Claims Clerk field employs several hundred thousand with a median wage near $46,000. Both pass the labor market check easily.

Jane's Results

The Bookkeeping Clerk position scores a PVQ of approximately 78 out of 100: high skill transfer (similar tasks and tools), full trait feasibility (sedentary work matches her restrictions with margin to spare), minimal vocational adjustment, and strong labor market numbers.

Jane's post-injury earning capacity, based on the best matching sedentary occupations and their BLS wage data, is approximately $38,000 to $47,000 per year.

Compared to her pre-injury earnings of $42,000, Jane may have little or no loss of earning capacity for the top-matching occupations, or a modest loss for others. The full report lays out each occupation, its PVQ score, its wage range, and the resulting earning capacity comparison, so that attorneys on both sides can see exactly how the numbers were reached.

8Why This Approach Matters

Many vocational analysis methods are proprietary. Their formulas are secret, their data sources are unclear, and opposing experts cannot reproduce their results. PVQ-TM was built to be the opposite of that.

Transparent Methodology

Every formula, every weight, every threshold is published. There is no hidden algorithm. What you see on the Methodology page of this application is exactly what the software executes.

Government Data Sources

All occupational data comes from public government databases: the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT), the O*NET system, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). These are the same sources Social Security uses.

Court-Defensible

Because the methodology is transparent and the data is public, every conclusion can be examined, challenged, and verified. There are no appeals to authority or trust — only data and arithmetic.

Reproducible Results

An opposing expert using the same inputs and the same published methodology will arrive at the same results. This eliminates the “dueling experts” problem where two vocational analysts reach different conclusions using secret methods.

The Bottom Line

PVQ-TM takes a complex vocational question — what can this person do and what will it pay — and answers it with a structured, transparent, reproducible process built entirely on public data. Whether you are the attorney presenting the analysis, the adjuster reviewing a claim, or the judge evaluating expert testimony, you can trace every number back to its source.