| Natalia Jofre: | Welcome to the Hill & Ponton Social Security Disability Blog. I’m Natalia Jofre, the Social Security Sections Director here at our law firm. |
| Shelly Campbell: | My name’s Shelly Campbell. I’m the Senior Social Security Attorney. |
| Natalia Jofre: | In a couple of past blogs we’re talking about the sequential evaluation process. We’re still breaking down what those different steps are and what they mean when Social Security’s evaluating a disability claim and whether a person can qualify. We’re now onto, Step 4, which is, can you work, not can you work, pardon me, your past work. |
| Shelly Campbell: | Right, that’s correct. Step Number 4, Social Security will determine whether or not you can perform your past relevant work. Your past, relevant work is going to be considered the work that you’ve performed just in the past 15 years prior to filing your disability claim. Social Security is just going to look at the type of work that you performed and the exertion level required, and the actual duties that you were performing in that job. |
| Natalia Jofre: | They get into the real nitty gritty. They’re actually going to send you a report, it’s called, the Work History Report, and they want to know, what did you do? Where did you work? Which dates? How much did you make? And then they get into real specifics like how much did you walk? How much did you sit? How much did you stand? How much did you lift? How much did you carry? |
| Shelly Campbell: | That’s correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Did you crouch? Did you stoop? They get into some pretty significant detail. I do think it’s important to mention that Social Security isn’t really that interested in who you worked for but what type of work you did. For example, if you worked as a waitress for Red Lobster and Perkins and Olive Garden, they don’t really care that you worked for those different places if the type of work you did was pretty much the same for all those places that’s what they’re going to look at. |
| Shelly Campbell: | Right. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Is what did you do when you had to work at those places? If you worked as a waitress for the past 15 years then that’s the only type of work they need to evaluate. Can you go back to being a waitress, right? |
| Shelly Campbell: | Right. That’s correct, and the largest factor in that determination is going to be the age. Social Security does differentiate individuals through this process based on their age. There are different age categories and those age categories are what dictate which rule Social Security will apply when determining whether they can do their past work. |
| Natalia Jofre: | As you might imagine that is a whole, other, broad subject and we are going to dedicate an entire blog to that, as well. For now, you need to know that Step 4 is basically, can you do any of the type of work you’ve done in the past 15 years prior to your disability? |
| Shelly Campbell: | Right. |
| Natalia Jofre: | The following step would be, can you be retrained to do any other type of work? |
| Shelly Campbell: | That is correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: | That also depends on your age, because, once again, if you’re over age 55 that doesn’t really apply. Right? |
| Shelly Campbell: | Right. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Yeah, OK, so we’ll talk about that some more in our next blog. For now, thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time. |
| Shelly Campbell: | Thank you. |
Video Blog – SS Sequential Eval – Step 4 – Past Work – History
