Medium Exertion and Standing/Walking Six Hours in an Eight-Hour Day

That is the common state agency finding, common consultative examiner finding, and frequent ALJ assessment of residual functional capacity.  The claimant can stand/walk for six of eight hours during the workday.  The problem is simple:  standing/walking for six hours does not permit the full range of medium work or even most unskilled medium jobs.

We start with the Dictionary of Occupational Titles because the Commissioner treats the DOT as the holy grail of vocational resources.  The DOT says:

M-Medium Work - Exerting 20 to 50 pounds of force occasionally, and/or 10 to 25 pounds of force frequently, and/or greater than negligible up to 10 pounds of force constantly to move objects. Physical Demand requirements are in excess of those for Light Work.

Nothing about six hours of standing/walking in the DOT. 

Occu Collect has a free summary DOC/SCO report just for signing up.

The Commissioner cannot claim the privilege of construing the DOT but she does promulgate regulations:

Medium work. Medium work involves lifting no more than 50 pounds at a time with frequent lifting or carrying of objects weighing up to 25 pounds. If someone can do medium work, we determine that he or she can also do sedentary and light work.

 Nothing about six hours of standing/walking in the regulations.  The Commissioner construes her own regulations.  SSR 83-10:

3. Medium work. The regulations define medium work as lifting no more than 50 pounds at a time with frequent lifting or carrying of objects weighing up to 25 pounds. A full range of medium work requires standing or walking, off and on, for a total of approximately 6 hours in an 8-hour workday in order to meet the requirements of frequent lifting or carrying objects weighing up to 25 pounds. As in light work, sitting may occur intermittently during the remaining time.

 There it is.  Six hours in an eight-hour workday.  Pretty definitive except that is required just to perform the frequent lifting required of medium work.  The second phrase that is important is that "sitting may occur intermittently during the remaining time."

May is one of those words that strips all meaning out of everything that follows.  May in this context means that the person might sit in the remaining two hours.  But even if the worker does sit, the ruling does not imply that the person sits for the remaining two hours.  Instead, SSR 83-10 states that the worker might sit intermittently during the remaining time.  So might sit some of the remaining two hours of the workday.

If the person cannot perform more than six hours of standing/walking in an eight-hour day, that person cannot perform the full, wide, or any portion of medium work based solely on administrative notice.  The person must stand/walk for six hours and have the ability to stand/walk intermittently in the other two hours with scattered sitting in between.

We see this in current ALJ decisions.  The ALJ will find that the person can perform medium work as defined in the regulations.  But the medical evidence says six hours or about six hours.  Failure to reconcile the medical evidence to the fact finding is error.