The medical-vocational guidelines, the so-called “grid,” 20 C.F.R. §§ 404.1501-1599 (1983), recently adopted by the Social Security Administration and upheld by the Supreme Court in
Heckler v. Campbell,
The Secretary found that the claimant’s work was semi-skilled in nature and imparted to him “skills that are transferable to work other than that previously performed.” The Secretary concluded that Regulation 404.1569 and Rule 201.03, Table No. 1 of Appendix 2, Subpart P, Regulations No. 4, direct that “claimant, considering his maximum sustained work capability, age, education, and work experience, be found ‘not disabled.’ ” (See Appendix for Table 1.)
Claimant filed the instant action seeking review of the Secretary’s decision under 42 U.S.C. § 405(q). Magistrate Lynn V. Hooe, Jr. issued a report on May 13, 1982, recommending that the Secretary’s decision be reversed. Although the Magistrate determined that there was substantial evidence in the record to support the ALJ’s findings of claimant’s residual capacity for sedentary work, advanced age, and marginal education, the Magistrate determined that Rule 201.03 of the medical-vocational guidelines did not apply to claimant because the latter’s work as a job setter in the auto industry had been unskilled.
The District Court rejected the Magistrate’s recommendation and affirmed the Secretary’s final decision. It noted that the claimant had contradicted his testimony at the hearing in his handwritten Exhibit No. 5 in which he described his job as occasionally requiring supervisory skills. The District Court determined that the claimant’s handwritten exhibit and the vocational expert’s testimony about the general nature of claimant’s work constituted substantial evidence to support a finding that he acquired the transferable skills of independence of judgment and responsibility for a work product from his job and that Rule 201.03 of the grid directed that he be found not to be disabled.
There is no dispute in the instant ease that the claimant is of an advanced age and has a marginal education. The Secretary, the Magistrate, and the District Court also all agree that there is substantial evidence in the record to support the finding that the claimant herein has the residual capacity to do sedentary work. The critical question in this ease, therefore, becomes whether claimant acquired transferable job skills under the grid and, thus, presumably would be able to find sedentary jobs in the national economy that he could perform.
The Secretary determined that the claimant’s work as a job setter was semi-skilled and imparted to him the transferable skills of “judgment and utilization of tools.” The District Court determined there was substantial evidence in the record to support a finding that claimant had acquired the transferable skills of “independence of judgment” and “responsibility for a work product.”
Both the Secretary’s and the District Court’s determinations regarding the claimant’s transferable skills are in error. The grid defines and treats skills as specific and articulable abilities, which are learned. According to 20 C.F.R. Subpart P, Appendix 2, Rule 201.00(f) (1983), “[i]n order to find transferability of skills to skilled sedentary work for individuals who are of advanced age (55 or over), there must be little, if any, vocational adjustment required in terms of tools, work processes, work settings, or the industry.” The definition of semi-skilled work in 20 C.F.R. § 404.1568(b) (1983) refers to such abilities as “inspecting, testing or otherwise looking for irregularities,” which are developed over a period of time through experience or training or both. 20 C.F.R. § 404.1565(a) (1983) defines work experience as “skills and abilities you have acquired through work which show the type of work you may be expected to do.” (emphasis added).
That “transferable skills,” as the term is used in the grid, must be particular acquired characteristics is further demonstrated by Rules 201.05 and 201.08. These rules direct that claimants who have not had a work history imparting transferable skills but have benefited from particular vocational education “provid[ing] for direct *161 entry into skilled work” are considered to be not disabled. Thus transferable skills for the purposes of the grid are made equivalent to education. Such skills refer to learned abilities which combine knowledge with coordinated physical movements, such as operating a typewriter, or a learned mental discipline, or an • area of expertise.
“Independence of judgment” and “responsibility for a work product” are too vague to constitute particular skills which are transferable. If “independence of judgment” and “responsibility for a work product” are to be considered skills independent of any particular tasks a claimant can perform, there is then no basis for distinguishing claimant’s skills from those of a lawyer, a secretary or a nuclear physicist.
Judge Cohn’s discussion of this same question in
Blake v. Secretary of Health & Human Services,
Judge Cohn emphasized that “[ujnder the regulations, a person restricted to sedentary work and handicapped by the adversities of advanced age and limited education is presumed disabled unless these limitations are compensated by the ‘substantial vocational asset’ of transferable work skills.”
This reasoning applies with equal force in the instant case. Accordingly, the judgment of the District Court is reversed and the case is remanded to the Secretary for the award of benefits.
APPENDIX
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