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Industry Primers

Bottom-up NAICS industry primers written for both public-market and private investors. Leaf industries are researched from the ground up; every group, subsector, and sector above them reads as a contrast across the industries beneath it.

2122 industries · 24 sectors · NAICS 2022

Researched with AI assistance from official U.S. statistics and independent sources, with citations on every page. Figures are not individually verified against pinned evidence — primers marked Evidence-verified are. Industry research, not investment advice. Methodology.

IndustryNAICS 92314Public Administration

Administration of Veterans' Affairs (United States)

NAICS 2022 code 92314 — an investor's primer (NAICS industry level)

Read this first. This is a rollup page. NAICS 92314 is a five-digit "industry" that contains exactly one six-digit child, 923140 — Administration of Veterans' Affairs. At this level of the taxonomy the two codes describe the same thing. This page gives the level's own scope and figures and points you to the child primer for the full detail. For the complete investable analysis — the vendor table, contract mechanics, demand drivers, and risks — read the 923140 primer.

1. Overview

NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) 92314 is the government function that decides who counts as a veteran, what benefits they are owed, and pays those benefits — the administrative and benefits arm of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), plus the state and county offices that help veterans file claims [1][2]. It excludes VA hospitals and clinics, which are classified as health care, not veterans' administration [1].

For an investor the takeaway is simple: you cannot buy this industry — it is a tax-funded public agency with no profit and no shares. You get exposure only through the private firms the VA pays to run pieces of it (disability exams, health-record software, claims and IT systems, community-care networks, and VA-guaranteed mortgages). That full map lives in the child primer.

2. What's inside — and why the level equals its one child

A NAICS five-digit "industry" is a container for six-digit "national industries." Most contain several. This one contains only one:

Six-digit child Title Share of the level
923140 Administration of Veterans' Affairs 100%

Because 923140 is the sole child, 92314 and 923140 are functionally identical — same scope, same operators, same economics. The five-digit code exists only so the taxonomy has a complete hierarchy; it adds no content of its own. Everything true of 923140 is true of 92314.

For reference, 92314's siblings — the other five-digit industries in industry group 9231, Administration of Human Resource Programs — are 92311 (Education Programs), 92312 (Public Health Programs), 92313 (Human Resource Programs, other), and 92315 (Housing Programs) [1]. Do not confuse them with this code.

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

Data caveat — read honestly. Our ground-truth statistics file for 92314 reports no ingested metrics — no establishments, employment, payroll, or receipts. That is not a value of zero; it is a genuine gap, and no suppressed figure is invented here. The reason is structural: the entire Public Administration sector (NAICS 92) is excluded by design from the Economic Census and County Business Patterns (CBP) [3], because these are government functions, not businesses. Employer-survey undercount is therefore near-total at this level — the industry is largely invisible in standard federal business data. The real measurements come from agency budgets, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Census of Governments. Because 92314 rolls up its single child, the child's figures are the level's figures:

  • Money administered. The VA's total budget crossed $400 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2025; the FY2026 request was $434.8 billion and the FY2027 request $488.2 billion — roughly one federal dollar in fifteen [5][6][7]. (A budget envelope is not this code's "revenue," but the benefits it administers are the core of the code.)
  • Benefits paid. The VA processed 3,001,734 disability and pension claims in FY2025 and paid about $195 billion in compensation and pension to 6.9 million-plus veterans and survivors [11].
  • Home loans. The VA guaranteed 528,340 home loans in FY2025 and stands behind roughly 3.7 million active VA mortgages [13].
  • Workforce. The VA requested 448,170 full-time-equivalent (FTE) employees for FY2025 — but most are health staff coded to hospitals; the administrative/benefits core (the Veterans Benefits Administration, ~32,000 employees, plus headquarters and state/county offices) is a fraction of it [4][9].
  • People served. About 17.9 million living veterans as of FY2024 [12].
  • Private opportunity. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the VA obligated nearly $3 billion in FY2022 across ~1,400 services vendors and $25 billion-plus for information technology (IT) in FY2017–FY2021 — the real pool private capital can reach [20][21].

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

With one child, all of the level's investable value sits in that child's vendor ecosystem. In brief: federal IT and services firms (Leidos, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, Accenture), disability-exam and health-services companies (Maximus, UnitedHealth's Optum), the electronic-health-record (EHR) prime (Oracle), VA-loan mortgage lenders (Rocket, UWM, PennyMac), and privately held operators (TriWest, Peraton, Guidehouse, Loyal Source, Veterans United). None is a pure play; for all of them VA work is one slice of a larger business. See the 923140 primer for the full company table and the public-vs-private breakdown.

5. How the money works

The function earns no revenue — it is a cost center funded by taxes, split between mandatory benefit payments (which rise automatically with caseload and cost-of-living adjustments) and discretionary operating money set by annual appropriations [5]. Private proxies get paid downstream: per-completed-exam fees, task orders on large IT contract vehicles, health-network administration fees, and mortgage origination/servicing income on VA-guaranteed loans. The central variable for equity investors is the government's make-vs-buy choice: the more the VA outsources, the larger the private revenue pool. Detail in 923140.

6. Demand drivers

Structurally durable, policy-driven demand: a slowly shrinking veteran population (projected ~17.9M in FY2024 to ~11.2M by FY2053) [12], offset near-term by expanding eligibility — above all the PACT Act (the 2022 toxic-exposure law), which drove 1.9 million-plus approved claims and record FY2025 claims volume [11][18]. Community-care access and health-record/administrative modernization round out the drivers. Demand tracks budgets, procurement, and policy more than the business cycle.

7. Regulation

This industry is regulation — it administers federal law rather than being policed by an outside body — governed by Title 38 of the U.S. Code, the MISSION Act (2018) and PACT Act (2022), the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and VA Acquisition Regulation (VAAR) for contracting, and HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) for contractors handling protected health information [19][20][18]. Oversight runs through the VA Office of Inspector General, the GAO, and the congressional Veterans' Affairs committees. Full treatment in 923140.

8. Consolidation

There is no competition to be the VA — it holds a legal monopoly on federal veterans' benefits. Consolidation is entirely in the contractor layer: the community-care network is being collapsed from five regions to two (contracts worth up to $1 trillion over ten years) [16]; disability exams have concentrated in four firms as outsourcing rose from 44% to 93% of exams in seven years [14]; and VA IT is consolidating into fewer, larger primes [21]. See 923140.

9. Risks

The main risks — budget and workforce whiplash (the VA cut roughly 30,000 positions in 2025) [21], appropriations and contract risk (large ceilings are not funded revenue), customer concentration on the VA/federal government, EHR execution risk, and the long-run demographic decline in veterans — all belong to the child and are detailed there.

10. How to invest & outlook

Because 92314 equals 923140, the how-to-invest thesis is identical: you cannot own the agency, so you own whoever the VA pays to run it — scaled federal-IT and services names, exam and health-services firms, the EHR prime, and VA-loan lenders, checked on funded backlog rather than headline contract ceilings, program concentration, and cash collection. There is no dedicated exchange-traded fund (ETF); diversified defense/government-services exposure is the closest packaged proxy. Near-term catalysts — the PACT Act claims wave, the restarting Oracle EHR program, and the community-care mega-recompete — tilt the pool toward large contractors even as the veteran population slowly declines. For the complete analysis, tickers, and catalyst detail, read the 923140 primer.

Sources

Drawn from the child primer (923140); numbering matches that primer.

  1. U.S. Census Bureau / NAICS, "923140 — Administration of Veterans' Affairs" (definition, sibling codes, exclusions), 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=923140&input=923140&year=2022
  2. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, "Administrations and Offices" (VHA / VBA / NCA structure), 2026. https://department.va.gov/administrations-and-offices/
  3. U.S. Census Bureau, "County Business Patterns FAQs" and Economic Census NAICS guidance (Public Administration excluded from CBP and the Economic Census), 2024–2026. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/about/faqs.html
  4. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, "FY 2025 Budget Submission — Budget in Brief" (448,170 FTE), 2024. https://department.va.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/fy-2025-va-budget-in-brief.pdf
  5. Congressional Research Service, "Department of Veterans Affairs FY2026 Appropriations" (R48968; $434.8B request; mandatory/discretionary split; Toxic Exposures Fund), 2026. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48968
  6. The American Legion, "VA budget tops $400 billion for 2025," 2025. https://www.legion.org/information-center/news/veterans-healthcare/2025/june/va-budget-tops-400-billion-for-2025
  7. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, "Budget — President's Budget Request for FY2027" ($488.2B request, +7.7% over FY2026 enacted), 2026. https://department.va.gov/administrations-and-offices/management/budget/
  8. Veterans Benefits Administration, "About VBA" (~32,000 employees; 56 regional offices; six benefit lines), 2024. https://www.benefits.va.gov/benefits/about.asp
  9. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, "VA reduces backlog of Veterans waiting for VA benefits by 57%" (FY2025: 3,001,734 claims processed; ~$195B paid to 6.9M+), 2025. https://news.va.gov/press-room/va-reduces-backlog-of-veterans-waiting-for-va-benefits-by-57/
  10. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VetPop2023 / National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics (17.9M FY2024 → 11.2M FY2053), 2024. https://www.va.gov/vetdata/veteran_population.asp
  11. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs / VBA Annual Benefits Report, "Loan Guaranty" (528,340 loans FY2025; ~3.7M active VA mortgages), 2024–2025. https://www.benefits.va.gov/REPORTS/abr/docs/2024-loan-guaranty.pdf
  12. claim.vet, "VA C&P Exam Contractors" (four contractors; 93% of exams by contractors in 2024 vs 44% in 2017), 2026. https://claim.vet/blog/cp-exam-contractors-lhi-ves-qtc-optum/
  13. Military Officers Association of America, "VA to Reorganize Community Care Contracts, Reducing Regions to 2" (up to $1 trillion over 10 years), 2025. https://www.moaa.org/content/publications-and-media/news-articles/2025-news-articles/health-care-and-earned-benefits/va-to-reorganize-community-care-contracts,-reducing-regions-to-2/
  14. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, PACT Act Dashboard (1.9M+ approved claims, $11B+ paid through Aug 2025), 2025. https://www.va.gov/resources/the-pact-act-and-your-va-benefits/
  15. Congressional Research Service, "VA MISSION Act of 2018" (R45390), 2018. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45390
  16. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, "Expansion of Health Care Eligibility for Toxic-Exposed Veterans" (PACT Act), 2024. https://www.va.gov/HEALTHBENEFITS/resources/publications/10-1745_Toxic-exposed_Veterans_20240320v2.pdf
  17. Federal News Network, "VA on track to cut nearly 30K jobs by end of fiscal 2025," 2025. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/07/va-on-track-to-cut-nearly-30k-jobs-by-end-of-fiscal-2025-eliminating-need-for-rif/
  18. Acquisition.gov, "Department of Veterans Affairs Acquisition Regulation System" (VAAR; and the FAR), 2022. https://www.acquisition.gov/vaar/part-801%E2%80%94department-veterans-affairs-acquisition-regulation-system
  19. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Business Associates" (HIPAA obligations for contractors handling PHI), 2018. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/business-associates/index.html
  20. Government Accountability Office, "Veterans Affairs: Information on Professional Services Contracting Data" (GAO-23-106961; ~$3B FY2022 across ~1,400 vendors), 2023. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106961
  21. Government Accountability Office, "VA IT Contracting" (GAO-23-105446; >$25B FY2017–FY2021; fewer contractors), 2022. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105446