Your long-term disability insurer has stopped your benefits because a vocational expert says you can work as a customer service representative, a dispatcher, or an office clerk. The report looks impressive: job titles, occupational codes, wage figures, confident conclusions.
But the expert may never have met you or spoken to you, and may not understand your medical limits. If the expert started from the wrong assumptions, the whole report is unreliable. Anyone who has watched vocational testimony at a Social Security hearing knows the rule: the opinion is only as good as the assumptions the expert was given.
Here are five reasons a vocational report may be wrong.
1. It relies on the wrong medical restrictions
Vocational experts do not decide your medical limits. They use restrictions supplied by a doctor, often the insurer’s reviewing or examining doctor rather than yours.
Example: your treating doctor says you can sit no more than 30 minutes at a time, must change positions often, and cannot sit more than four hours in a workday. The insurer’s doctor says you can sit six hours in an eight-hour day and lift ten pounds occasionally. The vocational expert uses the insurer’s doctor’s numbers and finds three sedentary jobs.
The expert may have found the right jobs for someone who can sit six hours a day. You may not be that person.
What to do: get the restrictions the expert used and compare them, line by line, with your treating doctor’s opinion.
2. It ignores whether you can work day after day
Many reports focus on sitting, standing, walking, and lifting. Disability often involves limits that are harder to measure: pain that interferes with concentration, fatigue that requires rest, medications that cause drowsiness, flare-ups you cannot predict, and appointments that cut into attendance.
Example: a woman with fibromyalgia can sit at a desk, use a computer, and answer a phone. But several days a week she has severe fatigue and must lie down for long periods. The report lists office jobs without addressing whether she could keep a predictable schedule.
Being able to do a job for an hour or two is different from showing up every day and doing it reliably.
What to do: ask your treating doctor to document attendance, unscheduled breaks, concentration, persistence, and your ability to sustain activity over a full week. How much these limits matter depends on the medical evidence and your policy’s definition of disability.
3. It assumes skills you do not have
Vocational experts look for transferable skills. Sometimes they go by job title instead of what you actually did, and assume computer skills, software experience, or certifications you never needed.
Example: a 58-year-old construction supervisor spent 30 years managing crews, coordinating deliveries, and running job sites. The expert says he can be an office project coordinator. That job requires advanced spreadsheets, project management software, electronic scheduling, and extensive computer documentation. He has little experience with any of them.
Supervising construction crews does not automatically qualify someone for a computer-based project management job.
What to do: for each job in the report, list the specific skills, technology, education, or training it requires that you do not have. A statement from a former supervisor about your real duties can help.
4. It relies on outdated or unrealistic job information
Some vocational experts use the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT), which was last updated in 1991. Many of its job descriptions are decades old. Today, a job classified as sedentary clerical work may require computer proficiency, fast data entry, juggling several software systems, and sustained productivity.
A claimant with chronic pain, medication side effects, and limited computer experience may not be able to meet those demands, even if an old description says the job is “sedentary.”
What to do: look at the sources the expert used and whether the report considers what the job requires today. Note that LTD insurers are not always required to use the DOT or to prove a specific opening exists. Your policy and the governing law decide what vocational evidence is needed.
5. The jobs do not meet your policy’s earnings requirement
This is one of the biggest differences between LTD and Social Security. Some LTD policies require the other occupation to pay a set percentage of your pre-disability earnings, such as 60%, 70%, or 80%. Others have no such requirement. Read yours.
Example: you earned $100,000 a year. Your policy requires another occupation to pay at least 60%, or $60,000. The report lists receptionist at $35,000, customer service representative at $42,000, and dispatcher at $48,000. Even if you could do all three, none meets the $60,000 threshold.
What to do: compare the policy’s earnings requirement with the wage figure for each job, and check where those wage figures came from.
Bonus: the expert may never have met you
Many vocational reports are prepared entirely from documents. The consultant may never ask about your real duties, your computer skills, or your education, and important information may be missing from what the insurer sent. That does not automatically invalidate a report, but incomplete information can undermine it.
What to do if your benefits were terminated based on a vocational report
- Request a complete copy of the report and the medical opinions behind it.
- Check whether the jobs match your physical limits, education, skills, and experience.
- Check whether the report addresses attendance, concentration, and breaks.
- Compare the jobs and wages with your policy’s actual language.
- Watch your appeal deadline. If ERISA governs your plan, you generally have at least 180 days, and the appeal is usually your chance to add a treating doctor’s opinion and your own vocational evidence to the record.
An unfavorable vocational report does not mean your claim is over. It means you need to find its weaknesses and build the evidence to answer them.
CTA: Received a termination based on a vocational report? Call 770-351-0801 or request a free case evaluation.
Related: How insurers use vocational experts · My insurer says I can do sedentary work · Own occupation vs. any occupation