The table below is from the Department of Labor's Occupational Requirements Survey (ORS). This is what Social Security hopes to use as a replacement for the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT).
- Less than a third of the workforce has jobs at the sedentary level. Contrary to the instincts of many office workers, they're very much in the minority in the workforce. Count your blessings. Don't assume that the work style you enjoy is available to most people. It's not.
- What
part of that 29.1% of jobs at the sedentary level is available to
those with only a high school education? What about those with less than
a high school education? What? You thought that everyone has a high
school education? How naive. Those with lower cognitive abilities often
fail to complete high school. Those with lower cognitive abilities also
file a lot of Social Security disability claims. You see, if all you had
to offer an employer was a strong back, you don't have much to fall
back on if you lose the strength in your back. By the way, what do you
think the odds are that Social Security already knows the percentage of
jobs at the sedentary level performed by those with a high school
level or less? Wouldn't giving Social Security an answer to that
question have been a simple matter for DOL? They're already
collected the data.
- Of that 30.2% of jobs that have no
minimum educational requirement, what percent do you think would be at
the sedentary or even light level? I'd guess not too many. Again, what
do you think the odds are that Social Security already knows the
answer to this question?
- Most workers are exposed to at least moderate noise. Who knew? Not many office workers would guess that.
- 78.7% of employees have to interact with the general public. That's one of many work demands that can be tough for those with psychiatric difficulties.
Really don't think that there's a dark agenda here. DOL should've maintained the jobs database. They're the ones with the inherent expertise and experts.
ReplyDeleteSSA doesn't have a great record of spending money on these kinds of projects. People with an operations or legal background are not IT or jobs in the economy experts.
That's why VEs supplement info in the DOT through testimony.
Lisa Rein at WAPO could've focused on the fact that leadership isn't good at spending money on projects outside their expertise. But she has her own agenda, through which her stories are filtered. People need a disability program that works and false narratives don't help them
What's the point of these statistics? If this was used as a "guide" for ALJs, it will simply lead to more arbitrary decisions, which are already too arbitrary.
ReplyDeleteWhat these guides don't do is give is a real evaluation of employability. Just because an ALJ gives you a certain level of skills and ability, that doesn't mean you do, or that you could actually sustain that level. Furthermore, it definitely doesn't mean ANY employer will evaluate you at those levels. Businesses are risk averse. They aren't gonig to hire someone who isn't capable of performing a job. Well, unless the government pays them to.
Wow 78 percent have some interaction with the public. Agreed that is why mental issues especially anxiety are so key to many disability cases.
ReplyDeleteTry working at an SSA field office while suffering from a mental condition…it’s unhealthy
DeleteI wonder what "interaction" actually is? Phone call? Face to face? Is there a time limit? 10 seconds, 30 seconds? 2 minutes? But it does show that one in three jobs out there have no educational requirements and 1 in 10 are work from home.
ReplyDeleteI would imagine that a fair number of jobs without education requirements are still out of reach for the many who have limited education and, more importantly, cognitive difficulties and/or psychological ones.
ReplyDeleteThink of sales and similar jobs. Lots of those jobs probably don't require education (I've known many a successful sales type with only a HS diploma), but someone with one or more of various types of mental impairments just won't be able to do them.
Not to mention that lots of "unskilled" work still requires significant physical abilities. We've all seen the videos of like farmworkers who blow through harvesting, bailing, etc. and thought to ourselves "I could work that job for a year and not be remotely as fast." And while exertional and non-exertional physical limitations conceivably cover this, one thing I noticed about the thousands and thousands of ALJ decisions I wrote/read/reviewed simply give too little consideration to a claimant's ability to SUSTAIN any type of activity over the course of a workday.
Even light work--be honest with yourself. Could you tote around a 20 lb suitcase or some such while walking around for a couple hours a day and then a smaller 10 lb suitcase for the other 6 hours? That'd be pretty tough for me and I'm healthy and youngish! Yet, all I saw were broken down folks much older than me being put back to some slightly reduced range of light work. Unreal.