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PROVING DISABILITY WITH VOCATIONAL EVIDENCE


Vocational evidence in a Social Security disability case is to be ignored or minimized at your own peril.  I think sometimes so much emphasis is placed on medical evidence that the vocational evidence is neglected.  Here are examples of what is meant by "vocational evidence."
  • What is your level of education and training?
  • What kind of work have you done for the last 15 years?
  • How was the past work categorized:  skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled?
  • What is your exertional level:  sedentary, light, medium, heavy or very heavy?
  • What kind of jobs, if any, are you still able to perform?
Those things are important because of the very definition of the word disability used by Social Security.  Under Social Security law, you are disabled if you have a serious medically determinable impairment that keeps you from working, or is expected to keep you from working for 12 months or more--or is expected to end in death.

In a nutshell, if Social Security finds that you are able to perform any of your past relevant work, you are not disabled.  Further, if it finds that you can perform "any other work" available in the national or local economy, you are not disabled.  Therefore, vocational evidence has equal importance with medical evidence.

Medical evidence is used to determine that you have one or more serious impairments.  Vocational evidence must be used to show that the impairment(s) prevent you from working. If an individual has a high school education or more, with vocational skills that can be transferred to other skilled or semi-skilled work, disability will be harder to prove.  On the other hand, if an individual has a limited education (7th grade or less), has no past relevant work--or only unskilled work, the benchmark for a finding of disability will be lower.  The medical + vocational evidence must come together to = disability.  Failure to properly develop this formula is one reason so many Social Security disability claims fail.


                            
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