In this video Marc Whitehead, a Board Certified Disability Attorney, explains why a claimants skill and education level matters.
If you are fighting a Disability Insurance Claim that’s based on ERISA Law there is a pretty good chance that your insurers have used such terminology as skill level without actually explaining what it means.
Generally speaking jobs are broken down into 3 Skill Level Groups:
Unskilled/ Semi-Skilled
Skilled
Very Skilled
These jobs are then categorized on whats knows as a SVP scale, with numbers ranging from 1-9.
Jobs in the 1-3 range are considered unskilled or semi-skilled jobs.
Those is the 4-6 range are called skilled.
7-9 are considered to be very skilled jobs
How is your jobs skill level decided?
In ERISA disability insurance claims Vocational Experts frequently use a Government Publication, known as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) as their guide.
Unskilled/ Semi-Skilled jobs are defined as those that take 30 days or less to learn and don’t help people learn any new job related skills.
Skilled Jobs is defined by the DOT as something that someone will spend 3-6 months to learn to do. These jobs can involve risk and may need people with decent levels of coordination.
Very Skilled Jobs are ones that require people to go through 6 months of training and education and often, these skills, can take years to master. These are positions that tend to require vocational school, college or even higher degrees.
It is important to be careful about how you word your answers to your disability application when talking about what you do at work.
Any experienced disability insurance Attorney can tell you that it is easy to make a lower level job sound more skilled by unintentionally talking it up. Unfortunately, we are trained to do just that but it is important to keep your job description simple and not embellish anything. You need to emphasize the physical, mental and cognitive requirements of your occupation keeping in mind that the point of the claim is to show why you are no longer able to preform that job.
One thing to take from this video: The more skilled you look the greater the likelihood that the disability insurance company will deny your claim. Saying that you could preform some other work because of your skills. So don’t over emphasize or brag about marginal skills or education. Also, in your application, describe your job in the most physically demanding way you can.
