Social Security Drops 114 Obsolete Occupations When Deciding Disability Benefit Eligibility

A projectionist at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France, on May 14, 2002. (Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP via Getty Images)

The Social Security Administration (SSA) recently made some important changes that will likely result in more disability benefit claims going through.

The way that the system works is that when an individual applies for disability benefits, their claim is partially decided based on whether there are available jobs in the market that match their abilities. If there’s a match, the claim would be denied.

Until this update, the SSA had depended on an outdated list of occupations that included many jobs that no longer exist or have very low vacancy rates. Some of the 114 positions now deleted include astronomers, geographers, motion picture projectionists, reptile farmers, railroad telegraphers, photoradio operators, and genealogists. A full list is available on the SSA website.

“The agency has identified 114 DOT [Dictionary of Occupational Titles] occupations with jobs that exist in very limited numbers, if at all,” the agency said in a June 24 statement. “Based on this finding, the agency will not use these occupations to support a ‘not disabled’ finding at the last step in the evaluation process for disability determinations.”

“By making this update, our decision makers will no longer cite these jobs when denying a disability application,” Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley said.

Removing these jobs from the list will ensure that fewer claims are rejected. The changes are applicable to Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the two programs through which the SSA administers disability benefits.

To find information related to work and job openings, the agency depends on the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) and its companion publication, the Selected Characteristics of Occupations Defined in the Revised Dictionary of Occupational Titles, with the former last being revised in 1991.

In addition, the SSA also identified 13 additional DOT occupations for which federal courts have questioned the agency’s “not disabled” determinations. SSA stated that it was “implementing additional evidence requirements for these occupations.” These jobs include nut sorter, microfilm processor, tube operator, almond blancher, and silver wrapper.

Commenting on SSA’s decision to not consider 114 occupations in its disability determinations, Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a June 24 post on social media platform X that the agency “should include new jobs that didn’t exist decades ago. That’s the politically sensitive part.”

Expanding Disability Benefits

Lawmakers had earlier criticized the occupation data used to determine disability. During a recent hearing, Senate Finance Committee ranking Republican member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) pointed out that the SSA continues to use “woefully outdated occupational data” for disability determinations.

“The Social Security Administration has already invested substantial time and resources into developing an alternative to this outdated occupational data, and I continue to urge the agency to move this project forward, as it is vital to ensuring applicants get an accurate disability decision,” he said.

In August, the SSA added 12 medical conditions to its Compassionate Allowances list, thus widening the applicability of disability benefits.

Usually, the SSA must procure medical records to determine whether a person is disabled. The Compassionate Allowances program allows for the quick identification of claims based on diagnosis alone. It is open only for medical conditions considered to be severe.

Meanwhile, a June 18 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggests that disability benefits may be disincentivizing some people from getting back to employment.

When disability beneficiaries get back to work, they must report these earnings to the SSA so that their benefits are adjusted. Beneficiaries who earn beyond a certain threshold risk losing disability benefits. This possibility creates an impediment to incentivizing work among disability income recipients, according to the GAO.

“SSA has been attempting to address work disincentives, but these efforts have yielded limited results. For example, SSA has undertaken numerous research efforts—known as demonstrations—to test changes to its disability programs that could encourage disabled beneficiaries to work,” the report states.

“However, academic research determined that 11 of these demonstrations resulted in little savings and almost no beneficiaries exiting the DI [Disability Insurance] program.”