SSA Five-Step Sequential Evaluation
Five-step process / Step 5
Step 5: Adjustment to Other Work
Can you adjust to other work that exists in significant numbers in the national economy?
Not disabled; evaluation stops.
Disabled; evaluation stops.
If you cannot return to past relevant work, Step 5 asks whether you can adjust to other work. SSA uses your RFC together with age, education, and work experience. At this final step, the burden shifts to SSA to show that suitable work exists in significant numbers.
Who has the burden at Step 5
You generally carry the burden through Step 4. At Step 5, SSA must provide evidence that other work exists in significant numbers in the national economy that you can do, given the RFC and vocational factors. The question is not whether a particular employer has a current opening near your home.
How the Grid Rules may decide the result
The Medical-Vocational Guidelines—often called the Grid Rules—combine exertional RFC, age, education, and work experience. A rule may direct a disabled or not-disabled finding when all of its factors match. Age thresholds and whether skills transfer can be especially important for people age 50 and older.
The grids focus mainly on strength-related limits. If nonexertional limits such as significant mental, postural, manipulative, sensory, or environmental restrictions reduce the available jobs, SSA may use a grid rule only as a framework and consider how much the occupational base is eroded.
Vocational expert testimony
SSA may use a vocational expert (VE) to identify jobs and explain their requirements. The decision-maker may ask the VE about a person with specified work-related limits; the answer depends on whether those limits are supported and accurately included. A VE can also address whether skills from past work transfer to other jobs.
Where favorable findings can happen
In the ordinary initial adult sequence, a claim can be found disabled at Step 3 by meeting or equaling a listing, or at Step 5 if SSA cannot show work you can adjust to. Step 4 is the past-work screen: if you cannot return to past work, the claim advances to Step 5 rather than ending there.
If a claim proceeds to an administrative law judge hearing, you can also learn about hearing offices and review public judge disposition information. Historical office or judge outcomes describe groups of past cases and do not predict an individual decision.
Explore SSA hearing officesExplore judge disposition information
Related site resources
Medical-Vocational Grid RulesSSA disability listingsSSA hearing officesAll five evaluation stepsHow long does a disability hearing take?