Military.com ran a review of the VA's own congressional budget records (Adam Gramegna, Oct 22, 2026), and the headline number is striking: more than 2 million Veterans now hold the VA's highest disability rating — up 122% from about 941,000 in June 2021. Over five years, the share of all compensated Veterans rated 100% climbed from roughly 18% to nearly a third. Full article
By the numbers:
- VA raised combined ratings to 100% more than 625,000 times from 2023–2025 — about 250,000 in 2025 alone.
- In 2025, 255,751 Veterans already on the rolls moved up to 100%; 118,699 of them jumped from 90% — the single biggest and fastest-growing path to 100%.
- Most of the growth is existing Veterans whose conditions worsened or who gained service connection for a new condition — roughly three upgrades to 100% for every one Veteran who entered the system already at 100%.
- The average rating across all compensated Veterans rose from 63.1% to 65.6% in a single year — which the VA calls its largest jump in “over 30 years.”
- About 6.3 million Veterans receive disability compensation today.
Why it's happening: the VA points to the PACT Act (20+ new presumptive toxic-exposure conditions, fully processed since Jan. 2023), regulatory updates, more claims getting completed, and more issues worked per claim. Worth noting the climb actually started before the PACT Act — Veterans at 100% went from 763,663 in FY2019 to 958,897 in FY2021, pre-law. And there's a demographic driver the budget tables don't spell out: the Veterans holding a 100% rating are, on average, older than they used to be — and service-connected conditions generally get worse with age, not better, which pushes combined ratings up over time rather than down.
What this is not:
- It isn't Veterans “gaming” the system. Individual Unemployability (TDIU) — the benefit critics usually point to as a shortcut — grew only about 3% in five years. The real growth is in schedular ratings backed by medical evidence.
- The 90%→100% move is also the largest pay increase between rating levels (roughly $2,447 vs. $4,080/month at the estimated 2027 rates, no dependents). In plain terms: Veterans who were already severely disabled — and under-compensated for it — are finally being made whole.
- Burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic exposures caused real, lasting harm. The PACT Act honoring those claims isn't a number inflating itself — it's a debt being paid.
Behind every one of these statistics is a Veteran whose condition got worse, or whose exposure the government finally acknowledged. The numbers are big because the need was always there — these are earned benefits, not a windfall.
If your own condition has worsened or you've picked up a new service-connected issue, it may be worth a look at a claim for an increase — the Toolkit's combined-ratings calculator and PACT presumptive reference can help you see where you'd land.