STEP 5 OF SOCIAL SECURITY'S DECISION MAKING PROCESS

At the 5th and final step of Social Security's decision making process, they must consider whether you would be able to perform any other work that exists in significant numbers in the national or regional economy.  If they find that you would be able to perform any other work (besides your past work), you will be found not disabled and denied benefits.

Factors that Social Security must consider at step 5 include:  age, education, past work and skills gained from that work, and your residual function capacity.

Factors that Social Security will not consider at Step 5 include:

• There are no openings for these jobs because the economy is weak.
• No one will actually hire you for one of these jobs.
• You wouldn't know where to begin looking for one of the jobs.
• You don't want to do any of that type of work.
• You don't have a license or certificate for that type of work (It has expired).
• There are none of these jobs in your hometown or the county you live in. 
• Getting one of these jobs would require a relocation. 
• This is not the type of work you were trained or educated to do.

Any other work literally means any other work.  I recently had a registered nurse with a master's degree (5 + years of college) who could no longer perform that work because of an impairment.  Social Security made the case that she was not disabled because she could work as a silverware wrapper, a parking lot attendant or a ticket taker at a movie theater.  This, of course, is not what the individual went to college for 5 years to do; however, step 5 allows her to be denied because those jobs exist in significant numbers in the US economy, or so say the vocational experts.

You and I may complain all day about how convoluted the rules are but the Government makes the rules and we have to play by them.