SSA Grid Rules Chart: Age, RFC, and the Three Tables

The SSA grid rules chart is the Social Security Administration’s Medical-Vocational Guidelines: three tables that combine your age, education, work history, and remaining physical work capacity into a numbered rule that directs either “disabled” or “not disabled.” The chart tilts more favorably as you get older, less educated, less skilled, and more physically limited. It matters most for applicants 50 and up with physical impairments, because the tables increasingly favor older workers who cannot easily retrain.¹

Where the Chart Fits in a Disability Claim

The chart only comes into play at the last step of the disability evaluation. Before it applies, the SSA has already decided that you are not working at substantial gainful activity, that you have a severe impairment expected to last at least 12 months, that your condition does not meet a listed impairment, and that you cannot return to your past work.² What remains is a single question: given your age, education, skills, and physical capacity, is there other work in the national economy you could realistically do? The chart resolves it.³

The Four Inputs the Chart Reads

Every rule in every table is built from the same four categories. Get your category right on each one and you can look up your rule.

Age

Age is the most powerful factor. The brackets:

Younger individual, 18–44. The SSA assumes age will not seriously limit your ability to adjust. The chart almost never directs “disabled” here.⁴
Younger individual, 45–49. Still “younger,” but one narrow rule (201.17) directs “disabled” if you are limited to sedentary work, illiterate, and have only unskilled or no work history.
Closely approaching advanced age, 50–54. The chart begins shifting in your favor.
Advanced age, 55–59. Age is treated as significantly affecting your ability to adjust; more rules direct “disabled,” and transferability standards get stricter.
Closely approaching retirement age, 60 and over. The most favorable bracket. Even the medium-work table has “disabled” rules for this group.

Education

Education is about grade level and the reasoning, arithmetic, and language skills that come with it. Since April 2020, the SSA no longer considers whether you were educated in another country or whether you speak English.⁵ The four tiers:

Illiterate. You cannot read or write a simple message in any language, even if you can sign your name.⁶
Marginal. Generally 6th grade or less.
Limited. Generally 7th through 11th grade.
High school and above. 12th grade or a GED, which the SSA treats as sufficient for semi-skilled through skilled work.⁷

Lower education favors “disabled” because it limits the range of jobs you could transition into. The line between marginal and limited matters: a 5th-grade education can tip certain rules toward “disabled” where a 9th-grade education would not.

Work Experience and Skill Transferability

Your past jobs are classified as unskilled, semi-skilled, or skilled using Specific Vocational Preparation (SVP), which measures how long the job takes to learn. Unskilled jobs (SVP 1–2) can be picked up in about a month. Semi-skilled (SVP 3–4) takes a few months. Skilled (SVP 5 and up) requires six months to several years.⁸

If your whole career was unskilled, you have no transferable skills, and the chart treats you accordingly. If you have semi-skilled or skilled experience, the SSA asks whether those skills carry to a job within your current physical capacity. For someone 55 or older limited to sedentary work, or 60 or older limited to light work, the transferability bar is very high: the new job must be so similar to the old one that little to no adjustment in tools, processes, or setting would be needed.⁹ Claims often turn on this point.

Residual Functional Capacity

Your residual functional capacity (RFC) is the most physically demanding work you can sustain over a full eight-hour day, assessed from your medical records and sometimes a consultative examination. The chart uses three exertion levels, each with its own table:

Sedentary. Lifting no more than 10 pounds at a time; primarily sitting with occasional walking or standing.¹⁰
Light. Lifting up to 20 pounds occasionally, 10 pounds frequently; standing or walking roughly six hours of the day.¹¹
Medium. Lifting up to 50 pounds occasionally, 25 pounds frequently.

If your RFC is heavy or very heavy, no chart table applies, because the SSA considers the full range of employment accessible to you.

Reading the Three Tables

Each table lists numbered rules. A rule specifies an age category, education level, and work experience type, then states the outcome. The tables are published in Appendix 2 of the SSA’s regulations.¹

Sedentary Table (Rules 201.01–201.29)

This is where the most “disabled” findings live. At advanced age (55+) with limited education or less and no transferable skills, rules 201.01 and 201.02 direct “disabled.” Even with a high school diploma, rule 201.06 can still find you disabled if the diploma does not lead to skilled work and you have no transferable skills.

At 50–54, rules 201.09 and 201.10 direct “disabled” for limited education or less with unskilled or non-transferable skills. Rule 201.12 extends that to high school graduates whose education does not provide direct entry into skilled work.

Below age 50 on this table, only rule 201.17 finds “disabled”: age 45–49, illiterate, and unskilled or no work history. Every other combination results in “not disabled.”

Light Table (Rules 202.01–202.22)

Harder to win on. At 55 and older, the pattern mirrors the sedentary table: limited education with unskilled or non-transferable skills leads to “disabled” (rules 202.01–202.02). At 50–54, the only “disabled” rule is 202.09: illiterate with unskilled or no work history. For anyone under 50 limited to light work, every rule directs “not disabled.”

Medium Table (Rules 203.01–203.31)

The toughest table. At age 60 and over, rule 203.01 directs “disabled” for marginal education or less with unskilled or no work history, and rule 203.02 does so for limited education or less with no work history at all. At 55–59, the only “disabled” rule is 203.10: limited education or less and no work history whatsoever. Below age 55, every rule on this table directs “not disabled.”

The Borderline Age Rule

Age brackets have hard cutoffs at 50, 55, and 60, and those cutoffs can flip an outcome. If you are 54 years and 10 months old when your claim is decided, you are technically in the 50–54 bracket. The borderline age rule tells adjudicators not to apply cutoffs rigidly: if you are within a few days to a few months of the next category, and using that higher category would produce “disabled,” the adjudicator must weigh whether to apply the older bracket after considering the overall facts of your case.⁴ The regulation deliberately avoids naming a precise number of months. If you are approaching 50, 55, or 60 while your claim is pending, that flexibility can matter.

Two Ways to Be Found Disabled Without the Chart

Two vocational profiles are evaluated before step five and can shortcut the chart entirely.¹²

Worn-out worker. If you have spent 35 years or more doing only arduous unskilled physical labor, have a marginal education or less, and can no longer do that type of work because of a severe impairment, the SSA finds you disabled. There is no minimum age. The regulation gives the example of a 58-year-old miner’s helper with a 4th-grade education and severe arthritis.

Age 55 or older with no past relevant work. If you are 55 or older with a limited education or less (11th grade or below) and no past relevant work experience, you are found disabled regardless of your RFC.

The Five-Year Past Work Rule

A change effective June 2024 shortened the lookback period for past relevant work from 15 years to five years, measured from the date of the decision.¹³ Work lasting fewer than 30 calendar days does not count regardless of when it occurred.

This mostly affects step four, but it also feeds the chart at step five. If your skilled work from eight years ago no longer counts as past relevant work, the SSA cannot treat those skills as transferable when applying a grid rule. For older workers whose recent employment was unskilled, that shift can change the applicable rule from “not disabled” to “disabled.”

When the Chart Does Not Directly Apply

The tables were built for physical (exertional) limitations. If your disability involves mental health conditions, chronic pain that does not neatly fit an exertion level, vision or hearing loss, or environmental restrictions like an inability to tolerate dust or fumes, the chart does not dictate the result. It serves as a framework instead.¹⁴

The adjudicator starts with the rule matching your physical capacity, then considers how much your non-physical limitations further shrink the pool of jobs you could do. If they knock out most of the remaining jobs, a “disabled” finding is still possible even when the underlying rule says “not disabled.” If the chart already directs “disabled” based on physical limits alone, the adjudicator can rely on that result without separately analyzing the non-physical issues.³ When the chart is used as a framework, a vocational expert usually testifies about what jobs exist for someone with your specific combination of limitations.¹⁵

1
Social Security Administration. 20 CFR Part 404 Subpart P Appendix 2 – Medical-Vocational Guidelines
2
Social Security Administration. 20 CFR 404.1520 – Evaluation of Disability in General
3
Social Security Administration. Program Operations Manual System (POMS) – DI 25025.005 Using the Medical-Vocational Guidelines
4
Social Security Administration. 20 CFR 404.1563 – Your Age as a Vocational Factor
5
Social Security Administration. SSR 20-01p – How We Determine an Individual’s Education Category
6
Social Security Administration. 20 CFR 404.1564 – Your Education as a Vocational Factor
7
Social Security Administration. Program Operations Manual System – Education as a Vocational Factor
8
U.S. Department of Labor. An Explanation of SVP
9
Social Security Administration. 20 CFR 404.1568 – Skill Requirements
10
Social Security Administration. 20 CFR 404.1567 – Physical Exertion Requirements
11
Social Security Administration. SSR 83-10 – Determining Capability to Do Other Work
12
eCFR. 20 CFR 404.1562 – Medical-Vocational Profiles
13
Social Security Administration. SSR 24-2p – How We Evaluate Past Relevant Work
14
Social Security Administration. SSR 83-14 – Evaluating a Combination of Exertional and Nonexertional Impairments
15
Social Security Administration. SSR 00-4p – Use of Vocational Expert and Vocational Specialist Evidence