You hear "SkillBridge" and the first question is always about money. What does it cost to host one of these interns? Is the math worth it? Most write-ups answer with a feel-good line about "giving back." That is not what a budget owner needs.

Here is the part that changes the whole calculation. During a SkillBridge program, the service member stays on active-duty pay from the Department of Defense. You pay them no salary. You get a working trial of up to 180 days, and the government covers their paycheck the entire time.

So the real cost is not wages. It is mentor time, a desk, some onboarding, and a little admin. This guide walks the actual cost line items, what you save, and how to run the ROI math for a midsize company. We will keep the numbers honest and labeled.

What does it cost to host a SkillBridge intern?

The biggest line on a normal hire is salary. With SkillBridge, that line is zero. The DoD pays the service member their salary, allowances, and benefits the whole time they train with you. Your real costs sit elsewhere, and they are smaller than people expect.

Break the cost into four buckets. None of them is payroll. Each one is something you already spend on any new hire, just scoped to a short trial.

Mentor time is the one that matters. If a senior employee spends a few hours a week guiding the intern, that is the spend. Bill it at their loaded hourly rate and you get your true cost. Everything else is rounding error.

We cover the program mechanics in our guide on how to become a SkillBridge host company. This article stays on the money side.

What do you actually save by hosting?

The savings are real, and they stack. Start with the obvious one. No salary for up to 180 days while you watch someone do the actual job. A normal trial hire costs you a full paycheck. This one does not.

Then add the working interview. A resume and two interviews tell you a little. Four months of real output tells you everything. You see how they solve problems, how they take feedback, and how they fit the team. That is the part you cannot buy.

The third saving is the quiet one. You lower your mis-hire risk. A bad hire is expensive. You pay to recruit, onboard, and ramp someone, then pay again to replace them when it does not work. A SkillBridge trial lets you confirm fit before you commit a single payroll dollar.

There is a fourth saving that hits your funnel. Hosting shortens your time-to-fill. The candidate is already in the building, already trained on your tools, already known. When they separate, the offer is a formality. For more on that, see our guide to reducing time-to-hire for veteran candidates.

How do you calculate SkillBridge ROI?

Run it like any business case. Add up what you spend. Add up what you avoid. Compare the two. The trick with SkillBridge is that the spend is small and the avoided cost is large.

Your cost is mostly mentor hours. Your benefit is the salary you did not pay during the trial, plus the mis-hire you did not make. Here is a simple worked example. The numbers are illustrative. Use your own.

The May 2025 mean wage for all occupations was $33.54 an hour, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS data. Plug your own role's wage into the model. For most midsize hires, the skipped salary dwarfs the mentor cost. The ROI math is not close.

How does the cost compare to a normal hire?

Stack a SkillBridge trial against your usual hiring path and the gap is wide. A normal hire starts the meter on day one. You post the job, screen, interview, and then pay a full salary while the new person ramps. If the fit is wrong, you eat all of it and start over.

A SkillBridge trial flips the front end. The DoD covers the paycheck during the trial. You spend mentor hours, not payroll. You learn what the person can actually do before you commit. The expensive parts of a bad hire never happen.

Think about where your money usually leaks. Recruiting fees. Job-board spend. The hours your team burns on interviews that go nowhere. A long onboarding for someone who quits in 90 days. SkillBridge shrinks most of those lines because the candidate arrives already vetted by months of real work.

The point is not that SkillBridge is free. It is that the trial moves your fit decision to before the expensive part. That is the whole reason the math works for a midsize budget. You are buying information cheaply that a normal hire makes you buy at full price.

What about tax credits and other incentives?

People ask about tax credits next. Be careful here. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit, the main veteran-hiring credit, expired at the end of 2025. It is not available for 2026 hires unless Congress renews it.

So do not build your SkillBridge ROI on a credit that is not live right now. Past lapses have been renewed later, sometimes retroactively. When it is authorized again, a qualifying veteran conversion may earn a credit. Treat that as upside, not as part of the base case.

SkillBridge itself is not a tax program. It is a training authorization. The cost savings come from skipped salary and lower mis-hire risk, not from a credit. If you want the full incentive picture, read our breakdown of veteran hiring incentives beyond WOTC and our note on the WOTC 2026 hiatus.

Is a SkillBridge slot a hire or a trial?

This trips people up, so get it straight. When a service member locks in a SkillBridge slot with you, that is not a job offer. It is a training authorization. They are still on active duty, still on DoD pay.

You have not hired anyone yet. You have a working interview that runs up to 180 days. The actual hire happens later, after they separate and you make an offer they accept. Until then, no salary changes hands and no full-time commitment is locked.

That distinction matters for your planning. You cannot count a SkillBridge intern as a filled seat on day one. You count them as a strong candidate in a long trial. The conversion is where the hire becomes real. We cover that step in detail in our guide on how to convert a SkillBridge intern into a full-time hire.

What are the risks, and how do you manage them?

SkillBridge is low cost, but it is not no risk. Know the failure modes before you start, so they do not surprise you.

The first risk is no conversion. The intern proves out, but they take another offer or you have no open seat. You spent mentor time with no hire to show for it. Manage this by hosting against a real opening, not as a side project. Have a seat ready.

The second risk is a weak fit. Sometimes the trial shows the person is not right. That is the system working, not a loss. You learned it on the government's payroll instead of yours. Still, set a clear training plan up front so the trial actually tests the job.

The third risk is mentor drain. If you assign a busy senior person and never protect their hours, the intern drifts and the experience sours. Budget the mentor time as real work. Put it on the calendar.

Where does the talent come from?

SkillBridge only pays off if you can find good candidates to host. That is the real bottleneck for most midsize companies. You know the program saves money. You just do not know where the people are.

This is where a candidate pool helps. BMR adds over 1,000 new veteran profiles every month, and more than 60,000 resumes have been built on the platform. That is a steady, growing supply of transitioning service members and veterans you can search and reach out to directly.

Hosting works best when you start the conversation before separation, while the service member is still eligible for a SkillBridge slot. Read our guide on hiring transitioning service members before separation for the timing. Transition programs are one of the strongest sourcing channels you have, and we lay them out in our overview of transition programs as a veteran sourcing channel.

The DoD runs the program. You can read the official rules and the employer FAQ at the DoD SkillBridge industry page and the Department of Labor. The hiring math is yours to run, and for most roles it works in your favor.

Is hosting SkillBridge worth it for a midsize company?

For most midsize companies, yes. The cost is small and mostly soft. The savings are real and they stack. You skip the salary during the trial. You see months of actual work. You cut your mis-hire risk. And you shorten your time-to-fill.

The candidates bring something extra worth naming. Transitioning service members show up trained, drug-tested, and used to structure. They have run real operations under pressure. For the full case on what they return, see our breakdown of the ROI of hiring veterans.

Run the model with your own numbers. Host against a real opening. Protect the mentor's time. Do that and SkillBridge becomes one of the cheapest, lowest-risk hiring channels you have. The talent is out there, and a fresh, growing pool of veteran candidates is waiting.