Special Edition GRIDS

All right, everyone, welcome to Q and A Social Security Disability Today Special edition. Today our special edition question focuses on the Medical Vocational Guidelines. I had a very special question. As always, I stressed to everyone, if you have a question that you'd like me to spend soul attention on just one, then I ask you to specify exactly what it is that you need me to address. I've had a gentleman today ask me to provide some information about the medical vocational guidelines as it relates to age, education and work experience, and so I want to do so here today. I hope this helps you out and enjoy. All Right, everyone, let's get started with the first component. Let's talk about age again. Let me give you the breakdown I

always like to do so before I start of the five step sequential evaluation process that Social Security currently uses. First step they look at is are you working? And if you're not working, they want to know if the reason is you're not working is because of step two, which means you have a significant impairment or impairments or a combination of both mental and health that keeps you out of work twelve months or more. If the answer is yes, then The next question is do any of those questions any of those conditions meet the criteria of listed medical conditions found in the listings of medical conditions by Social Security.

If the answer is no, then you move on to the four step, which is looking at your limitations from your medical conditions along with your age, education and work experience. Could you go back to do anything that you used to do in the last fifteen years, and then if you can't, can you do anything else? A lot of times the Medical Invocational Guidelines, which we were affectionately referred to in the social security industry as the GRIDS, is more applicable to the fifth step. It's usually when the GRIDS come in, because if they believe that your limitations or the condition that you have would give you the ability to go back to do the work that you used to do, then of course you're denied at step four. Step five has to deal

with other work, and typically social Security once they have your medical condition, they're now going to start looking at your limitations and then they start utilizing three particular criteria. I tell people all the time that here's the things that you need to realize with regards to that. Let's take one each step at a time. With age, I know it was a long, limited lead in.

Let's get it cracking. For purposes of Social Security as an adult, there really are four distinctive age categories. There is younger individuals which forty nine and below. There is closely approaching advanced age, which is fifty to fifty four. There is advanced age, which is fifty five to fifty nine, and then there's closely approaching retirement age, which I believe is sixty to sixty four. Rule of thumb I tell people all the time is that if you're under the age of fifty, social Security typically will determine that your age is not a factor that they consider in the course of determining your vocational guidelines.

I'm gonna read to you exactly what it says in the regulations. If you are a younger person which is under the age of fifty, we generally do not consider that your age will seriously affect your ability to adjust to other work. People. The age criteria wholeheartedly is relied upon for the purposes of determining your ability to adjust to other work. So if you yell, you can just wrap it up. Now, let's go to the other categories. Fifty, of course, fifty to fifty four is closely approaching advanced age. Fifty five to fifty five to fifty nine, of course is advanced age, and then sixty to sixty four is closely approaching retirement age. Here's the rule of thumb that I tell people. As you get into each bracket above the age

of fifteen, as you notice there's three of them. As you get to each bracket above the age of fifty, age becomes a more significant factor that Social Security relies upon in order to determine whether you're able to adjust to other work. In other words, if you're fifty five or fifty six, it is assumed that your ability to adjust to work is a little bit more hampered than if you are a fifty one or fifty two. There's even a special category if you're between sixty to sixty four. If you're closely approaching retirement age, which is sixty and older, and they don't think you can do anything more than just light work, then they're going to determine that that their skills aren't transferable. Only if there's transferable to the exact job that you are similar

to what you had previously done, so keep that thought in the back of your mind. The biggest thing you need to know is that the regulations have been set up so that the older you are, and this is not a knock on people who are older. This is not discrimination or anything. The ideas you remember when you're hitting your fifties in late fifty during the sixties, you've been in the workforce probably about a good thirty to forty years as that particular point, and so your ability to adjust to other work may be significantly hampered by the fact that you've kind of been acclimated to certain ways of doing things, so your ability to just might be hampered. Okay, everyone, let's get down to the education portion of it. Really, at the end

of the day, there's really five things that you need to be aware of for education purposes. You're either considered illiterate, which means you' unable to read or write. For the most part, it's basically an ability to read or write. Marginal is less than the sixth grade. Limited is sixth through eleventh grade. And then of course high school education is high school graduate or ged and above. Kind of keep it in your back of your mind. Is this the less and this is where I tell people all the time, the less education you have, the more difficult it is for you to be able to acquire additional skills or be able to learn additional things. That's kind of the presumption social Security takes that you will be hampered because of your limited educational

background. It's almost like the criteria that I mentioned with the age, but it goes backwards, meaning the less education you have, the more of a factor it is relied upon for Social Security to your favor. So guess what, if I got a college degree, my educational factor is going to be less of an impact as opposed to somebody who has a fifth grade education.

In other words, they're gonna have a lot harder time finding a job with a fifth grade education than me with a college degree. Also, what you also, it's considered part of an educational factor, and this pops up a lot with those persons who don't speak English. Social Security typically takes in consideration your ability to speak English as well. This comes up a lot when you have individuals who come over here and have English as a secondary language and they don't know how to speak English at all. They don't even have English as a secondary language. They're learning English as a secondary one. So social Security typically considers the education I mean the language as a part of the educational component.

All right, let's get down to the work portion of this at the end, and I'm gonna try to see if I can break this down so that it's not as confusing. So please forgive me. If by some odd reason it is not confusing, I'll be more than happy to address it again if i am. There are three types of categories of work that you do.

First of all, the reason why Social Security looks at the work you've done in the last fifteen years is because, for purposes of relevance, that is the time period that they have established that is pertinent to your case, because that's the most recent type of work you've done. Think about it. If you're forty five, forty six years old, so Security could care less about work you did when you were eighteen coming out of high school. Those facts are irrelevant. They're looking at the work that you've done in the last fifteen years. Now, work is typically categorized in the three categories semi skills.

Giv me unskilled, semi skilled skilled. Now, for purposes of our discussion, remember one thing if the work that you've done was unskilled, there are no skills to transfer. And let me pause for a second, talk about transferable. The reason why Social Security wants to know about the work that you've done in the past because they want to know have you acquired certain skills that could be transferred to other jobs. Let me give you a good example.

If you're a cashier, what's a good skill that you have? As a cashier? You handle money? So then you ask yourself, if I'm a person and I can only do a sit down job, are there any sit down jobs out there that requires a skill or where a skill of a handling money could be helpful. Now, some of you would say, God, there's no sit down jobs. Oh please, Yes there are a toe collector that's a sit down job. Contrary to popablief, most of the I don't even realize if they're sitting a ticket taker because you're taking money and you're handing tickets, as those jobs typically are sit down jobs. The reason it's important to remember skills is that they want to determine whether or not you've got something that you acquire from one job that you can take to something else.

Now, go back to what we were talking about before. There are no transferable unskilled jobs, meaning you can't get any skills from an unskilled job and transfer to another unskilled So if this has been determined that you have worked at unskilled jobs, take that out of the equation. Skills and semi skills are kind of tricky because typically semi skills means you've acquired a certain skill, but it's just not highly complex to learn that skill. And those were usually the jobs where you're getting skills that you can use for other things, like I said with handling cash and cashiers. Now skills work typically requires a greater degree of complexity. Think about an engineer, think about an attorney, think about

a doctor, Think about a job that is so hyper technical. But now you have to ask yourself is that job skill transferable to any other jobs outside of that type of arena. Now, don't get me wrong, I have a skill set that could probably some of the things I have could easily transferred to like a legal assistant or illegal secretary or a legal paralegal. So you but if you notice, those are very hyper specific jobs as opposed to a multitude of jobs. Like if you say I have a medium job that require me to handle money, and I say, well, I have a transferable skill of being able to handle money. That skill I could transfer it all kind of jobs in the light level and in the sedentary level. Okay, so keep those three things in mind talking about when Social Security is trying to

determine whether or not you can do any other work, they are looking at your limitations first. Other words, they're going to ask themselves, with all the problems that you have, how are you limited? How are you limited your ability to stand, sit, walk? How are you limited in your ability to concentrate, focus and do task? And once they have what we call a residual functional capacity, which is basically an RFC, a breakdown of what your limitations are, they look at your age to see how old you are, They look at your education, then they look at your work experience, and they take all of that information collectively to rely upon to determine whether or not there is any other works that you can do in the national economy.

I hope this video helped out. I know the grids can be very confusing, and I encourage you to speak to a Social Security representative if you have specific questions about your case and whether the grids can be applicable to you. I hope this helps you out as always keeping questions coming and again turning Anthony Reef and I thank you for joining me with another edition of Q and a Social Security Disability Today

Special Edition GRIDS

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