Social Security occupational data update appears stalled after agency drops regulatory overhaul

A long-planned refresh of the occupational data used in the disability adjudication process at the Social Security Administration was tucked inside a regulatory overhaul that the Trump administration abandoned last week. 

As a result, the agency now appears to be without a timeline for finalizing that years-in-the-making update, which SSA has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on, according to remarks made by the Social Security commissioner, Frank Bisignano, during a Monday meeting.

SSA still relies on outdated occupational data from the Labor Department, which was last updated in 1991, to determine if a disability applicant is able to shift to a new type of work that’s considered plentiful in the U.S. economy. If it's determined that they can adapt to a new type of work, they don’t get benefits. 

Both Democrats and Republicans have pushed SSA to move to data that better reflects the modern economy, and SSA has been working on doing so for over a decade.

But Bisignano didn't offer any clear plan for updating that dataset during the Monday meeting held by a Social Security disability rights group, Alliance for America’s Promise, with disability lawyers and advocates, according to two people who attended that meeting. They asked that their names be withheld, as they weren’t authorized to speak on the record. 

The commissioner was asked multiple times about the future of the data project now that the regulatory changes have been abandoned. 

Bisignano acknowledged that lawmakers think the data needs to be updated, committed to looking into the issue and said that he hoped it could be updated in the future — emphasizing collaboration and consensus building as important for that process — but he didn't share any specific plan or timeline for doing so. 

He also denied that any regulatory overhaul that would cut people’s benefits was ever in the works, although SSA listed the rule change in the regulatory agenda. SSA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The now-abandoned rule that would’ve moved the agency forward in updating the occupational data was controversial among Democrats and advocates for other policy alterations it included, specifically how it would change, potentially even eliminate, age as a criterion for disability benefits. Critics warned that would cut hundreds of thousands of people from such benefits. 

Proponents of the regulatory change — which the Trump administration pursued but didn’t finish during his first term — argued that those revisions were needed to account for new types of desk work that people with disabilities could do, and for longer livespans.

Updating occupational data, meanwhile, has long been a bipartisan priority, although the agency has struggled to actually move to new data.

Since 2012, SSA has been working with the Bureau of Labor Statistics on a new occupational dataset to use, called the Occupational Requirements Survey. SSA has already spent over $300 million on the project.

The agency had previously expected to move to the new data in 2020, according to the Government Accountability Office, which reported in February of this year that SSA didn’t have a clear plan or a target date for moving to the new occupational data. The out-of-date dataset is on GAO’s annual “high risk list” for the government. 

Biden’s Social Security Commissioner, Martin O’Malley, also didn’t have a firm timeline for the agency switching to the new job data when asked by The Washington Post last year.

Using such outdated data can cause benefit denials based on a determination that an applicant could find a job listed in the occupational dataset that actually no longer exists in large numbers, like a microfilm processor, as the Washington Post detailed in a 2022 investigation. 

Last year, SSA identified 114 occupations that exist in very limited numbers, or not at all, and announced that it would no longer use these jobs to issue a “not disabled” finding. Those included jobs like a telegrapher and “motion picture projectionist.”

SSA also published a new rule making it easier for vocational experts to use more recent job definitions, but the disability process generally continues to rely on the job data that are over 30 years old, according to GAO.

The old dataset, called the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, also doesn’t include jobs that have emerged since the 1990s, like the technology jobs available in the modern economy, or the type of granular data on the mental and cognitive requirements of jobs that are especially relevant when SSA evaluates claims of mental health conditions.

If and when SSA moves to the dataset put together by BLS, it will also need new IT systems to implement the change, although that technology work has been on hold for years, pending rule and policy changes, according to GAO.

Michelle Spadafore, a senior supervising attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group and project director of the organization’s disability advocacy project, told Nextgov/FCW in a statement that she’s satisfied with the current outcome on the “complex issue.”

“The cancellation of the mega reg is worth a delay on updating the vocational data used in the disability process,” she said.