Years of working in a manufacturing facility or steel mill have done some damage to your body, you can’t keep working. You don’t really have any skills that transfer to sedentary work, which is really all you can do.
At your age, you feel like you’re both too old to transition to another career but you’re too young to file for retirement. Will the Social Security Administration (SSA) take that into consideration if you file a claim for disability benefits?
Once you turn 50, your age does become a factor in SSA’s decision process
Generally speaking, unless you are “within a few days to a few months” (which is not precisely defined but unlikely to be more than six months) of your 50th birthday, SSA doesn’t consider your age to be a barrier to retraining. Even if you’ve never done any kind of office work or other sedentary jobs, SSA believes that you have the capacity to make the adjustment (unless you can prove otherwise).
After you turn 50, however, things begin to change, with the criteria for what it takes to be approved for Social Security Disability (SSDI) benefits gradually relaxing. If you’re limited to sedentary work and simply never acquired the skills to transfer to a sit-down job without any real difficulty, your claim can be approved.
If you’re over age 55, SSA considers that “advanced age” that makes it very difficult for you to adjust to a new job and new type of work, so the criteria get even looser. Some people even refer to 55 as “the magic age” for SSDI approvals because the agency really only considers whether or not you can keep doing the kind of work that you’ve always done before.
If your industrial or manufacturing job has gotten too much for you to handle after years of labor, you may have more options than you know. A successful SSDI claim often relies on presenting evidence of your condition in exactly the way that SSA needs to see it. Experienced legal guidance can help.