| Natalia Jofre: | Welcome to the Hill & Ponton Social Security disability blog. I’m Natalia Jofre. I’m the Social Security section director here at our law firm. |
| Shelly Campbell: | My name is Shelly Campbell. I am the senior Social Security attorney. |
| Natalia Jofre: | In our previous blog, we talked about working. How social security evaluates that in terms of, can you do any of the type of work you’ve done in the past 15 years prior to your disability, or can you be retrained to do some other type of work, depending on how old you are? We’re going to be talking a little bit more in depth regarding age, and how that applies to your case in a separate blog. Today, we’re going to talk about work, because not all work is created equal. |
| Shelly Campbell: | That is true. |
| Natalia Jofre: | There’s different categories. Shelly, our work aficionado is going to talk about, what are those categories? |
| Shelly Campbell: | With Social Security, everyone’s past work is broken down and classified. With each position, it has to be determined what the exertion level is. Meaning, how physically demanding is your job? Then, what the skill level is. Meaning, how much training did you have to have to be able to perform it? For each job is going to be given an exertion level, and a skill level. We’ll talk later about how that’s used to either deny or grant the claim. For now, I thought maybe we should just talk about the different levels of work. |
| Natalia Jofre: | People sometimes identify, that kind of is what applies to me, or that’s sort of the type of work I did. |
| Shelly Campbell: | People will get decisions from Social Security, and it will have a job title and a classification number. It may say heavy 2, and they have no idea what that means. Basically for every position there is, there is a number that is assigned to it. If they see that in a decision, it’s just a number that is assigned to that specific type of work. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Would you say that the harder the type of work the person did, the easier it could become for them to be found disabled, depending on how old they are? |
| Shelly Campbell: | Absolutely. Depending on how old they are, and depending on their injuries, for sure. For physical demands of work, there are four different classifications. The first one is sedentary work. That’s the type of work where you’re seated at a desk. You’re mostly doing data entry, or answering a phone, but you’re not doing a lot of heavy lifting. You’re not having to do a lot of walking or standing. |
| Natalia Jofre: | A lot of people think, secretary. |
| Shelly Campbell: | Absolutely. That’s a very good example. The level up from that is going to be called a light position. That position is going to require somebody to be standing and walking for the majority of the day, but the lifting will just be mild. They’re not going to be doing construction, or anything like that. They may be lifting 10 to 20 pounds throughout the day. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Sometimes people get confused or they think, “Oh, no. I have a sedentary job.” They don’t think about when you have to load copy paper into the copier. You need to pick up boxes full of files, carry heavy books or binders of paper. Things like that. All of that would fall into that lifting and carrying that’s considered? |
| Shelly Campbell: | Yes. Absolutely. A good example of a light job is a cashier. Someone that’s required to be on their feet. They’re still lifting, but they’re not doing really heavy lifting. The next level of work is going to be medium work. Medium work, again, is going to require a person to be on their feet a majority of the day, but it’s going to require a lot more heavy lifting. This is when you’re going to get into more of industrial housekeeping, or construction. Some construction jobs. |
| Natalia Jofre: | What’s the lifting, carrying on that? |
| Shelly Campbell: | That’s over 30 pounds. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Pretty significant. |
| Shelly Campbell: | That would be over 30 pounds on a regular basis. Not that you have to lift 30 pounds once a week. This would be that you have to lift 30 pounds, basically throughout the day. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Maybe even a stocker at a supermarket? |
| Shelly Campbell: | Absolutely. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Boxes of merchandise. Things like that. |
| Shelly Campbell: | Definitely. |
| Natalia Jofre: | What’s the next one? |
| Shelly Campbell: | The next one is going to be heavy work. That is going to be your heavy equipment operator. Really heavy construction work, where the majority of the job is very, very physical. That’s going to be lifting over 50 pounds regularly. Obviously, being required to be on your feet and walking throughout the day. There is another very heavy classification. Usually heavy and very heavy are pretty close together. That one does require lifting over 100 pounds throughout the day. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Wouldn’t you say, because it’s difficult for most layman’s terms or regular person if you will, to understand, wow. That classification, some of these seem so similar. From light to sedentary. Figuring out, where do I fit in that? This could lead Social Security to denying a person that really should be approved, maybe because they were just put into the wrong work classification. |
| Shelly Campbell: | Exactly. We see that happen all the time, where a position will be classified as a sedentary or light position, when that wasn’t the case at all. In most cases, it does usually require going before a judge in a hearing, and clarifying. Really explaining what the person actually did, compared to what was written down at some point in their file. |
| Natalia Jofre: | We’ll be talking some more about work and other requirements Social Security has, when you’re trying to prove your disability case. For now, if you have any questions regarding a potential claim, or you’d like to talk to our office, you can call us or visit our website at hillandponton.com. For now, we thank you for watching. We’ll see you next time. |
| Shelly Campbell: | Thank you. |
Video Blog – SS Sequential Eval – Step 4 – Past Work – Levels
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