Social Security's continued use of wildly outdated vocational information in determining disability continues to draw media attention. How much longer will the agency go on with the pretense that it's trying to develop a new source of vocational information? What's it been now, 12 years or more, that they've been working on this and they still can't get the answers they want?
Mar 23, 2023
This Is Ridiculous
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I heard about it when I was in ALJ training in 2008.
I'm sure there's no lack of security system monitors out there...
Nut Sorter? Wow.... The video in that article is worth the watch. Invisible disabilities are difficult for both the claimant, the doctors, and SSA. More awareness needs to be brought to that issue as well. "You don't look disabled" is never a statement a disability recipient wants to hear, nor should they. It's always on the tip of peoples' tongue though when they see someone that says their disabled, but look fine. It's devastating in some instances. Great article and accompanying video.
While the DOT is laughably outdated, I'm not sure you're going to be thrilled with the degree to which the pendulum swings based on updated/recent job data vis-a-vis your clients...
Fruit Weigher
Well they’re a lot of those positions. Every large department store and casinos have them
The greeters at Walmart, Sams Club, Costco etc are about as simple as they can get with sit/stand options.
@8:13 - those jobs are not the jobs described as "Surveillance System Monitor" in the DOT. Those jobs have additional requirements and are more complex. The Surveillance System Monitor as described in the DOT has not existed since the Dept of Homeland Security took over the port authorities and other government transportation facilities. Any VE still citing this job cannot be seriously considered to be an expert witness.
The ALJs primary mission is to adjudicate RFC. SSA delegates step 5 to the VEs and minimizes ALJ authority at this step. Step 5 objections are a technicality for when the rep can't prove disability -- "OK, so my client can work full time, but I disagree with the VE, so I win in spite of the RFC". Solution, simplify step five requirements: if you can work, you can work.
The articles descriptions of SSI is laughably wrong.
Then there's Supplemental Security Income or SSI. This is for people who may have been born with a disability or developed one during childhood that has kept them from earning a livelihood, or retired individuals above 65 who meet certain financial criteria.
Does anyone ever tell these people when they make those kind of mistakes.
SSA doesn’t delegate any authority to VEs. The regulations merely state that VE testimony is one of many sources of information on which ALJs my rely when making determinations at steps four and five.
*SMFH*. If you aren’t going to learn the law you’re paid a huge annual salary to implement, at least spare us all the embarrassment by not spouting off like this in public fora.
I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what SSI is…
@8:48 - It was a joke, as is the DOT
A disability claimant who uses information he knows is false to get benefits is guilty of a crime, and rightly so. SSA currently enables the use vocational information from the DOT that it knows is false to deprive disability claimants of benefits.
What SSA is currently doing is just as bad as the claimant who uses false information to get benefits. Maybe worse, as it unfairly hurts people the Social Security Act was intended to help.
While SSA is working on its new system, why not do to the DOT what it did recently to treating physician opinions? Make it never controlling. Instead of giving administrative notice to the fiction of the DOT's correctness, acknowledge in formal policy the obvious truth that some job descriptions in it are obsolete. Vocational opinions based on the DOT should be evaluated for supportability and consistency with more recent job data, similarly to how a treating source medical opinion should be evaluated for supportability and consistency with the record.
At my DDS, it would be interesting and possibly embarrassing, to do a study on the most widely used job examples. I’m betting the list would be short, since probationaries are all given the same job example lists to match an RFC, and likely will continue to use them again and again. A change to Occubrowser might require us to actually open the clunky thing which takes too much time. It’s just faster and easier to keep citing the same jobs. Sad but true.
I have picked up a case to go to US District Court and two of the jobs the VW suggested were nut sorter and document preparer. smdh
Another interesting exercise is to take a job like addresser and look through the federal court cases that mention the different job numbers that vocational experts come up with. 2,000...15,000...50,000 and so on. Obviously no reliable methodology going on there.
Doesn’t need to be exact. Just needs to be substantial. If it was that simple we wouldn’t need VEs at all.
Experts disagree. Attend any technical trial and it will be about dueling experts
What really is the purpose of the "VE?" Ultimately, the ALJ determines the RFC... the VE is just given "hypotheticals," which can be just as mythical as the "jobs" cited by the VE.
@10:42
I've attended those technical trials. They require proof of a reliable methodology or the expert testimony won't be allowed. Somewhere there might be an ALJ willing to question a VE on their methodology for job incidence numbers, for instance why they testified to 250,000 document preparers in the nation, when a different VE in their last hearing swore there was only 7,000. I just haven't found such an ALJ in the past 20 years of doing hearings.
This type of testimony would not be accepted in any legitimate legal proceeding.
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