To decide whether you have a disability, we will use a 5-step process. Listed below are frequently asked questions about steps 4 and 5 of the process.
We'll need to find out about your past work to decide if you can still do that work. To make this decision, we'll need to know how you did your job. We'll also need to know what skills you learned on your job.
We need this information to see if you can do any of your past work. Remember according to our rules, we will not decide you have a disability unless your illnesses, injuries, or conditions prevent you from doing your past work or adjusting to other work.
We will also need information about your education and training. If you cannot do work you did previously, we'll look at your age, education, training, and work experience to see if you can do other kinds of work.
Disclaimer: The following is general information only. The Social Security Act and related regulations, rulings, and case law should be used or cited as authority for the Social Security disability programs.
If you have a medical condition that affects your ability to work on a regular basis, but is not as severe as any impairment described in the Listing of Impairments, we'll assess your residual functional capacity (RFC). This means we will look at all the evidence we have and determine what you can still do, despite any limitations caused by your impairment and related symptoms, such as pain and fatigue.
When we assess your remaining ability to do basic work-related activities, we will look at how your medical condition has affected your ability to:
We will look at the demands of your recent past work and compare them with our assessment of your remaining ability to do basic work activities. We'll only look at your past work that we consider relevant. Past relevant work typically includes:
If we decide the past work you did is relevant, we will compare your capacity for work with:
To make these comparisons, we'll need a complete description of past work.
After we make the comparison, we will decide your status as follows:
We will need the titles of your jobs in the past 5 years. We'll also need a description of the work you did. There are jobs with the same name but very different duties. There are also jobs that have the same duties but have different names. That is why a job title is not enough to describe your work.
We will need information about the:
We'll also need to know about any requirements of your past job(s) that caused you to change how you did your work or that you could not meet because of your medical condition. For example:
We'll want to know:
It is your responsibility to provide us with the information we'll need to determine whether you have a disability. If you do not provide the information we need about your medical condition and your work history, we may have insufficient evidence to evaluate your claim and have to decide you do not have a disability.
We will decide you do not have a disability. In our process, we'll evaluate your ability to do the physical and mental activities you were required to do in your past work. We will not consider whether you could get a job doing this work.
For example, we will not consider whether:
If we decide you cannot do the work you did before, we will consider your remaining ability to do other work considering your age, education, and work experience. We will assess these factors with your capacity to work to determine if you can be expected to adjust to other work that exists in the national economy.
We’ll consider how many years of school you have completed. We will consider whether you have completed any type of special job training or trade or vocational school when we assess your ability to adjust to other work. However, absence of formal education does not necessarily mean you are uneducated or limited in your ability to adjust to work. We will consider strong evidence that your educational achievement is higher or lower than the last grade you completed.
We generally consider illiteracy and inability to communicate in English as educational factors that limit a person’s ability to adjust to other work.
We'll consider how many years of school you have completed. We will consider whether you have completed any type of special job training or trade or vocational school when we assess your ability to adjust to other work. However, absence of formal education does not necessarily mean you are uneducated or limited in your ability to adjust to work. We will consider strong evidence that your educational achievement is higher or lower than the last grade you completed.
We generally consider illiteracy and inability to communicate in English as educational factors that limit a person's ability to adjust to other work.
We'll consider your chronological age in combination with your residual functional capacity, education, and work experience. We will not consider your ability to adjust to other work based on your age alone. We will consider advancing age to be an increasingly limiting factor in your ability to make an adjustment to other work.
If you are a younger person (under age 50), we generally do not consider that your age will seriously affect your ability to adjust to other work. However, in some circumstances, we consider that persons aged 45 to 49 are more limited in their ability to adjust to other work than persons who have not attained age 45.
If you are closely approaching advanced age (age 50 to 54), we will consider that your age along with a severe impairment and limited work experience may seriously affect your ability to adjust to other work.
We will consider that advanced age (age 55 or older) significantly affects your ability to adjust to other work. We have special rules for persons in this category who are closely approaching retirement age (age 60 and above).
When we consider your ability to adjust to work you have not done before, we will consider your vocational factors of residual functional capacity, age, education, and past work experience.
For example, you may not be able to do the lifting required by your past work as an automobile mechanic. However, you may have the ability to adjust to other less strenuous work based on your residual functional capacity, age, education, and past work experience. We may find that you could use your skills to be a carburetor mechanic, which is a less strenuous occupation.
Have you recently and successfully completed education or training that allows you to enter into a specific skilled or semiskilled occupation that you are physically and mentally able to do? If you have, we will decide you do not have a disability. For example, if you recently completed a program certifying you to become a chef, and you are physically and mentally able to do that kind of work, we will decide you do not have a disability.
In our regulations, we have tables of rules that we use as guides to evaluate how your age, education, and work experience affect your remaining capacity for work.
For example, a person with the following vocational profile would be determined to have a disability, according to our tables of medical-vocational guidelines:
Capacity for work:
Education: High school.
Work Experience: No skills that can be transferred to work this person is physically able to do.
However, if this person has skills that could be used for work within their capacity and that exists in significant numbers in the national economy, we would decide this person does not have a disability.