Accessing ORS Reports from Job Browser Pro -- Marker for Example

  Vocational witnesses identify marker, DOT 209.587-034, as a go to light occupation with simple routine or repetitive duties involving occasional contact. With reasoning level 2, marker fits the simple work mantra in many jurisdictions. VW find refuge in this occupation; Job Browser Pro estimates 165,000 jobs. 

One of the features of JBP is the hyperlink button to the ORS data. JBP reports the first final and second final wave estimates. For marker, the hyperlink button to "Show ORS Data" is greyed out. With 2,8 million jobs in the occupational group and 165,000 jobs in the DOT code, certainly the Bureau of Labor Statistics has gotten to this occupational group. It has. 

The 2018 revisions of the Standard Occupational Classification moved SOC 43-5081, stock clerks and order fillers, to SOC 53-7065, stockers and order fillers. The O*NET divided stock clerks and order fillers into detailed categories:

1.     SOC 43-5081.01, Stock Clerks, Sales Floor
2.     SOC 43-5081.02, Marking Clerks
3.     SOC 43-5081.03, Stock Clerks - Stockroom, Warehouses, or Storage Yard
4.     SOC 43-5081.04, Order Fillers, Wholesale and Retail Sales

The 2018 ORS dataset provided provides data for the first, third, and fourth, but not for marking clerks. The 2018 SOC moved the category to 53-7065. The O*NET did not maintain the four detailed classifications. Subsequent editions of the ORS also dropped the four O*NET detailed data and adopted the singular SOC classification for the numerous jobs and occupations.

The ORS did not cover marking clerks, including marker, in the 2018 data set. The ORS covers the entire range in the 2023 data set. Occu Collect provides all the reports in the front page or in archives. The question is how to extract the data from JBP and SkillTRAN.

Clicking on the hyperlink button takes the user to https://online.skilltran.com/cbp/orsResults.php?dot=XXXXXXXXX. If you try to go there directly, it won't work. That URL works from JBP but not natively. The nine Xs are the DOT code. Open JPB to any occupation that has ORS data. I use lens inserter. When you get to the DOT estimate for that other occupation, click on the ORS hyperlink. When JBP opens your browser to that page, change the URL with the DOT code for your occupation to the DOT code for marker, no hyphen, no spaces, "209387034." You now have the 2023 ORS data for stockers and order fillers.

What does the ORS tell us about stockers and order fillers? The jobs require SSA defined medium exertion and require more than six hours of standing and walking, 

Some may notice the the "SSA definition of medium exertion." BLS defines light exertion as lifting, carrying, pushing, and pulling up to 25 pounds occasionally. The DOT used 20 pounds as do the SSA regulations. No matter what the ruling, ALJ, VW, or court may say, there is not soft much less a hard limit on the amount of standing and walking required of any range of work except sedentary, 2.7 hours. 

Use of other resources in Occu Collect as well as hyperlinked in JBP on the detailed job specialty page, the O*NET OnLine in particular, confirm the pedestrian observation that unskilled work requires working on conjunction with or proximity to others. Stockers and order fillers of occasional or no contact with others in 4% of jobs and do not have at least a fairly important job function of working with a group or team in 4% of jobs. 

If the question asks for light work (SSA definition), standing/walking six hours combined in a workday, simple and routine/repetitive tasks, involving no more than occasional contact/interaction with other, the occupation of marker does not fit based on exertion, standing/walking, and contact with others. JBP does not integrate the data from the ORS or the O*NET into its job number estimates. Those estimates arrive from an occupation-industry intersection divided by the DOT codes at that intersection. 

Some limitations in the tools we use have a workaround. This is one of them. 

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Suggested Citation:

Lawrence Rohlfing, Accessing ORS Reports from Job Browser Pro -- Marker for Example, California Social Security Attorney (February 24, 2024, corrected March 8, 2024)

https://californiasocialsecurityattorney.blogspot.com

The author has been AV-rated since 2000 and listed in Super Lawyers since 2008.

 

The 2023 Occupational Requirements Survey Data Set -- A Must Use Resource

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the 2023 data set for the ORS. BLS has finally filled in the gaps and reported significantly more data than in either the first wave culminating in the 2018 first wave or any data set from 2019 to 2022. I examined the data for the go to occupations for vocational experts in the light and sedentary categories -- Production Workers, All Other (SOC 51-9199). This list contains 52 of 137 sedentary unskilled codes and over 400 of the 1,400 light unskilled DOT codes. The testimony that any of those occupations represent more than a handful of jobs is unsupportable. 

The ORS reports that production workers require:

1.   strength required is sedentary: -
2.   strength required is light: 11.1%
3.   strength required is medium: 84.5%
4.   strength required is heavy: 4.2%

The Occupational Outlook Handbook reports that production workers represent 226,900 jobs in the nation. The Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics reports that production workers represent 252,660 jobs in the nation. Trusting government statistics reported to OMB standards, there are no jobs in the sedentary exertion and fewer than 28,000 jobs in the light exertion categories. The ORS reports that production workers have: 

1.   specific vocational preparation is beyond short demonstration through 1 month: 26.4%   
2.   specific vocational preparation is over 1 month through 3 months: 35.6%
3.   specific vocational preparation is over 6 months through 1 year: -
4.   specific vocational preparation is over 1 year through 2 years: 1.4%
5.   specific vocational preparation is over 2 years through 4 years: 13.5%

On the issue of how much standing and walking is required for production workers:

1.    hours of standing (10th percentile): 6
2.    hours of standing (25th percentile): 6
3.    hours of standing (50th percentile - median): 8
4.    hours of standing (75th percentile): 8
5.    hours of standing (90th percentile): 8

The percent of the day reports suggest that some of the jobs are part-time:

1.    percent of day standing is required (10th percentile): 75%
2.    percent of day standing is required (25th percentile): 100%

The existence of sedentary and light unskilled work that exists in significant numbers is less than 7,000 jobs --  total. That gross estimate assumes that skill levels cross exertional levels with the same relative frequency. If skill level and exertion level as inversely correlated (sedentary and light work are more likely to represent skilled or semi-skilled work), then the estimate goes down. If the person has a limit to standing and walking 6 hours in a workday, the estimate drops by over half. 

Job Browser Pro hyperlinks to the ORS data reporting the 2018 final first wave and the 2023 final second wave data side-by-side. OccuCollect reports the data files for 2017 through 2022 in the Archives and 2023 final second wave data on the main page. Note that Job Browser Pro reports the ORS data but does not incorporate that data into job number estimates. 

Vocational testimony that any unskilled production worker occupation represents a significant number of jobs, go after the issue. The witness is wrong. 

Don't let vocational witnesses rob your clients of benefits or you of hard-earned fees. 

___________________________

Suggested Citation:

Lawrence Rohlfing, The 2023 Occupational Requirements Survey Data Set -- A Must Use Resource, California Social Security Attorney (February 19, 2024)

https://californiasocialsecurityattorney.blogspot.com

The author has been AV-rated since 2000 and listed in Super Lawyers since 2008.