Step 4: Understanding Past Relevant Work
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Once Social Security has an idea of what you can do as outlined in your RFC, they compare that with the physical and mental requirements of work you have done before (your “past relevant work” or “PRW”). This is a little more complicated than it sounds. Not all work you have done in the past is necessarily relevant. Also, just because you can’t do your specific job anymore doesn’t mean you can’t do your PRW anymore, because you might have performed that job differently than most people in the national economy perform it.
Where does Social Security get information about work?
Social Security uses the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, or “DOT,” and its companion volume, the Selected Characteristics of Occupations, or “SCO,” as its framework for defining jobs that exist in the national economy. This is slightly controversial because the DOT has not been updated in decades and many of the jobs it lists do not exist anymore; or if they do, they do not exist in the form that the DOT describes. Social Security adjudicators use vocational experts to testify about the contents of the DOT.
The ability and training to challenge vocational experts about their testimony that Social Security attorneys possess is one of the reasons why we strongly recommend having a representative at any disability hearing. However, if you do find yourself alone and confronted with a vocational expert in a hearing, you are entitled to ask them questions on a variety of topics, including the source of their estimates for numbers of jobs and whether the jobs they’ve listed as ones that you can do are still jobs that exist as described in the DOT.
What is PRW?
PRW is work that you have done in the 15 years prior to the decision being made that you have performed at substantial gainful activity levels for long enough to learn to do the job. The DOT lists the amount of training that goes into each job by length of time required (this is the “SVP,” which ranges from 1, for no training beyond short demonstration, through 9, for over 10 years).
So, if you did a job 20 years ago for a couple of weeks, it’s not going to be PRW. But, if you did some call center work (usually considered SVP 3, defined as requiring over 1 month up to and including 3 months to learn) for a few months about 10 years ago, that’s going to be considered PRW even if the rest of your career you did something completely different, like supervising construction sites. You’re going to have to prove that neither the call center work nor the construction supervision fits within your RFC in order to proceed to Step Five.
But I was fired from my last job because of my impairments. How could I be found able to perform my PRW?
Social Security considers whether you can perform your PRW as actually performed or as generally performed in the national economy. Even if you undisputedly can’t do your actual job as you’ve described it to Social Security, you still might be found able to do your PRW as generally performed because your specific workplace asked more of you than most similar workplaces do. Conversely, you may undisputedly not be able to perform your PRW as generally performed in the national economy, but because your specific job did not ask you to do everything that most jobs like that ask, the job as you performed it still fits within your RFC, so you can perform your PRW as actually performed. Either way, you would be found “not disabled” at Step Four.
