Vocational Assessment of Lost Earnings (VALE) is a PC-based software used to determine a proxy for earning capacity and project lifetime lost earnings in present value terms.  Each of these functions is discussed below as a separate module.

Earning Capacity

Many cases require the use of a "proxy" instead of actual earnings when stating annual earning capacity.  (For more information on proxies, click here.)  This component of VALE is intended for just that purpose.  The software provides the user with two proxy options:

• Education-Specific - Average earnings by level of education and disability status are provided, as extracted from the Annual Demographic Profile survey conducted by the US Census Bureau.
• Characteristic-Based - Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles cross-linked to market-specific earnings from the US Decennial Census, allows the user to extract average earnings for persons with specified abilities and restrictions that best match their plaintiff.

Projection of Lifetime Lost Earnings

This component is also sold as a stand-alone program, titled Worklife Probability.

Using the probabilities that underlie The New Worklife Expectancy Tables, the program computes probable earnings on a year-by-year basis using the LPE (Life, Participation, and Employment) methodology.  Earning capacity for both pre- and post-incident are either derived from the above module or entered explicitly by the user.  The user also identifies the following key variables:

• Starting and ending ages for the analysis
• Education level, possibly different for pre- and post-incident
• Gender
• Disability status (see Worklife Expectancy Tables page form more information)
• Fringe benefit rate, stated as a percentage of base income
• Compensation growth and discount rates used to determine present value

The program then computes the pre- and post-incident earnings stream over all future years, with the resulting difference being the loss.

Purchase

VALE may be ordered for $700 using our Order Form.  Users receive three labor markets of their choice for this price.  A labor market may be a standard metropolitan area, a state, or the US as a whole.  Labor markets may be customized for practically any area of the country for an additional fee.  Labor markets above the included three may be added, with price depending on the number of markets ordered.

For more information on VALE, see the following links:

• VALE Users' Manual - Complete users' manual with full explanation of computation methodology and underlying data.
• Vale Data Sources - Vocational Economics Technical site data listing with links to data sources.
• Worklife Expectancy - Page describing The New Worklife Expectancy Tables.
• Software Support - Pages addressing all known issues with the VALE software.

Last Modified 05/24/2012