Social Security Disability Sequential Evaluation Steps

Step Five of the Five Step Sequential Evaluation Process Disability Examiners Use to Allow or Deny Your Application for SSI and Social Security Disability Benefits...

  Here's a little graphic of the five step sequential evaluation process

5. Can you do any other type of work?

  If you can not do your past work, then the final question becomes: “Can you do any other type of work”? To answer this question, SSA provides several tools for the DE to use such as the vocational rules and GRID. These tools pretty much spell out in tabular format whether you will be able to do other work based on your age, education and previous skill level of work. As a younger individual (i.e. under 50) SSA determines that you can probably do some type of other work or be trained to do other work because you are still young enough and trainable enough to do other work. For older individuals the GRIDS will often be in your favor if you have previously done light work, but can now only do sedentary work because of your condition, or if you previously did medium level work and because of your current functional limitation can only now do light level work. Or, in the case of mental disease, if you have previously held professional level work, but can now only handle unskilled work.

But it seems that the more education a person has, even if s/he is over 50, the less likely will be their chance of qualifying for disability benefits under these GRID rules. This is primarily because some of their skills may be transferable to other work, while the person with less education who has only worked in unskilled jobs throughout his/her career would not have skills to transfer to other work.

A list of the GRIDS will be posted here (if I can find them online). An outline of the Sequential Evaluation process will also be scanned in and posted here—or somewhere on the site—if I am not able to locate it already on the web.

If it is determined that you can do any other work based on your age, education, past work and current functional capacity, then your claim will be denied.

If you can not be expected to return to any type of work based on these same criteria, then your claim will be “allowed”.

Social Security Administration Information on the Five Step Sequential Evaluation Process   l  More Technical Stuff here

Disclaimer: The information on this page has been written by an ex-Disability Examiner and is not guaranteed to be accurate or to reflect the current state of what happens in the local SS office or DDS office. It is merely presented to give you an idea of the sequential evaluation process based on the writer’s memory of same. And it is certainly not to be construed as constituting legal advice; it is for informational purposes only. If you need assistance with your social security disability claim, please consult an attorney or non-attorney representative or disability consultant.