SSD Disability: I Was Denied for Other Work by Social Security Disability

Social Security disability and SSI awards are based upon the premise that an individual is totally disabled, which means that the individual has not been able to perform substantial work activity for the past twelve months, or that they expect to be unable to perform substantial work activity for twelve months due to their disabling condition or conditions.

Social Security disability is not a short-term disability program, nor is it a "percentage of disability" type program. Keeping that in mind, when Social Security disability examiners make medical decisions on disability cases, they consider many factors other than an individual’s particular medical and/or mental condition when rendering their disability determination.

For instance, disability examiners consider an individual’s age, education, and work history (types of work performed at the SGA or substantial gainful work activity level for three months or longer) along with an individual's particular impairment when making their medical determination.

In fact, Social Security considers what an individual is able to doing in spite of the limitations caused by their disabling impairment or impairments (otherwise known as residual functional capacity) more important than what their particular disabling condition is. I.E, being able to state that you have been diagnosed with condition X or Y may not be as significant as you think.

Social Security disability examiners use medical evidence to determine what an individual’s residual functional capacity is, then they plug this information into vocational guidelines known as the “Vocational Grid”.

Why a grid? First of all, uniformity. The vocational grid allows Social Security to make uniform medical determinations, because the grid considers an individual's age, education, and functional limitations to establish if an individual can be considered disabled by Social Security disability guidelines and, based on "input", it directs an "output" or decision. However, given the fact that some consideration is given to age, level of work skills, level of education, and existing physical or mental limitations, there is no doubt in my mind that the grid also exists to ensure some measure of "real world" fairness.

After all, a person with less skills will be less likely to be able to transition to some new type of work, which may also be the case for a person with less education. Also, despite the fact that the U.S. population is graying, employers repeatedly show less inclination to hire older workers versus younger ones.

To determine if an individual's limitations rule out past work, Social Security uses a handbook known as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, or DOT (pretty much everyone agrees that this outdated compendium is an utter joke) to determine what physical and mental demands are required by each job than an individual has performed for three months or longer at the SGA level in the past fifteen years (this is, of course, assuming the adjudicator even manages to properly identify a job described by a claimant---which is why I often write that you need to supplied detailed information about your work history as well as your medical history). Disability examiners consider the requirements of these jobs in comparison to the functional limitations established by the medical evidence contained in an individual’s disability file.

If the individual’s residual functional capacity is too restrictive to perform any of their past work as described in the DOT, the examiner must consider other types of work an individual might be able to perform based upon their current limitations. Now, at disability hearings judges may give consideration as to whether "other jobs" actually exist in a state; however, I can tell you from direct experience as an examiner that, at the lower levels, the adjudicator may come up with a list of "other work" jobs that may or may not exist in the local economy. So much for fairness there.

If an individual is "denied to other work" (SSA lingo, i.e. a person was denied for disability based on the assumption that they could perform some type of work other than what they've done in the past), this simply means that the disability examiner found their functional limitations to be too restrictive for them to return to their past work; however the examiner did find that the individual was able to perform other work based upon their RFC, or residual functional capacity, rating.