WHY MOST PEOPLE LOSE SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY BENEFITS

Social Security will usually concede that you cannot do any of your past relevant work, but that you can do something.  It's that something (other work) that gets you denied.

At a disability appeal hearing, there are 2 central figures besides the claimant and his representative.  One figure is the administrative law judge, the other is the vocational expert that Social Security has called to testify about available jobs in the local, regional or national economy.

The judge will lay out a hypothetical situation based on what he/she believes to be the claimant's ability to perform certain work related activities, such as walking, standing, sitting, reaching, bending, concentrating, following directions, etc.  The vocational expert (who is being paid by Social Security) will give examples of jobs that the claimant could still perform, and tell how many of those jobs exist in the US and state economy.

Social Security's regulations require it to use an ancient publication called the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) which was first published during the Great Depression and last updated in 1986.  It doesn't matter that it's old and out of date, federal regulations dictates that the DOT be used for job descriptions.  From the ancient DOT codes, vocational witnesses will "extrapolate" current numbers of jobs that exist.  This gets claimants denied frequently.

At a recent hearing, the vocational expert testified that my client could perform the following jobs, as they are described in the DOT, and gave numbers of jobs available.

Assembler - and he stated that there are 125,000 of those jobs available in the US and 2,000 jobs available in Alabama.

Order Clerk - He said there are over 200,000 of those jobs in the US and 5000 in Alabama.

Pharmaceutical Packager - with 100,000 jobs nationally and 1,000 in Alabama.

These job numbers are being used to deny claims.  Here's the problem with those job numbers.  No government agency reports jobs any more using the outdated DOT codes (Dictionary of Occupational Titles).  Jobs are reported using census data codes, also called SOC codes.  A SOC code is a grouping of many jobs with many different DOT codes. (One vocational expert admitted that an SOC code may contain as many as 15,000 DOT codes).

So, there are not really 125,000 jobs for an assembler in the United States.  There are 125,000 jobs in a much larger body of jobs reported under the same SOC Code as "assembler."  How do you pull out just the assembler jobs that meet the claimant's work restrictions?  No one knows.  There does not appear to be any scientific or mathematical way to determine how many assembler jobs there really are in the United States but I'd bet my top button that there  are not 125,000.  The same holds true for order clerk, pharmaceutical packager, surveillance system monitor, or any other job that a vocational expert pulls out of his hat.

How does all this apply to winning a Social Security disability claim?  Well, you have to challenge the assumption that there are really that many jobs out there, in each specific case.  Remember, the claimant is not disabled if he can perform a specific job and those jobs really exist in "substantial numbers."  However, the jobs cited by the vocational expert must match the functional limitations that the judge says the claimant has.  And it is the DOT that defines the job's requirements.  But the DOT doesn't say how many jobs are out there.  That's another code called the SOC.  So a good representative will not sit still for a vocational expert telling the judge that there 500,000 jobs out there that the claimant could perform.  The representative's question should be, in essence, "Wait a minute--where did you get all those numbers?"

Oh, I got them from the Bureau of Labor.  What kind of Code are they reported by?  Oh, they are reported by SOC Codes.  But, we have to know how many jobs exist under the DOT code.  How did you find that?  "I extrapolated them from the SOC code."  Great, explain to me how you did that?  What is the mathematical or scientific process?  How do you know that's an accurate number?

I have not yet had a vocational expert to swear under oath there he or she knows of a mathematical or scientific method to "extrapolate" the number of jobs in existence under a DOT code when the jobs were actually reported under an SOC code.  Never.  Therein lies the fallacy that gets millions of claims denied every year by Social Security. I want to write more about this in another post.