Of course, when I talk to clients about their disability cases, they want to tell me about their medical conditions.
But an unusual feature of the disability system is that in some cases, how and when they performed their past work can actually be more important than any physical or mental health impairments.
For years, part of Social Security disability’s process has been to determine whether a claimant can perform any past jobs they’ve had in the last 15 years as the job was actually performed, or as it is generally performed in the national economy.
This has caused numerous issues as many people have difficulty remembering a job that they may have performed for just a few months more than a decade ago. And this system has also meant numerous people have been told they are not disabled because they could (in theory) go back to a job that they last performed 10 years ago, regardless of whether they actually do still have the skills to return to it.
Thankfully, Social Security is finally changing how it looks at past work.
While the new rule formally goes into effect in June, we’re already seeing at the hearing level that under this change, Social Security is now only considering full-time jobs claimants have performed in the past five years.
This change should have huge positive changes at the hearing level, drastically reducing how much time needs to be spent talking about past jobs. It should also mean significantly more people will be approved for benefits as Social Security cannot tell them to go back to jobs they haven’t done in more than a decade.
