SSA Unskilled

With thanks to Bob Kassin for his research effort, here are the 137 sedentary occupations listed in the DOT with an SVP of "1" or "2" - i.e., that can be learned in 30 days or less. This "famous" list is again noted in Social Security Ruling 96-9p:

The term "occupational base" means the approximate number of occupations that an individual has the RFC to perform considering all exertional and nonexertional limitations and restrictions. (See SSR 83-10 [cite omitted]) A full range of sedentary work includes all or substantially all of the approximately 200 [Note 5] unskilled sedentary occupations administratively noticed in Table No. 1.

\5\ The regulations specify that this is an approximation. The revised fourth edition of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and its companion volumes (the DOT, 1991) lists 137 separate occupations. However, the introduction to Volume I explains that the fourth edition of the DOT (1977) "substantially modified or combined with related definitions" several thousand definitions from the third edition. In 1992, we published a notice in the Federal Register explaining that an analysis of the revised fourth edition of the DOT and available data for the then upcoming volume of the Selected Characteristics of Occupations Defined in the Revised Dictionary of Occupational Titles (SCO) showed "that the range of work of which the medical-vocational rules take administrative notice continues to represent more occupations than would be required to represent significant numbers," and that "we have received no significant data or other evidence to indicate that * * * the unskilled occupational base * * * has changed substantially." (See 57 FR 43005, September 17, 1992.) In February 1996, contact with the North Carolina Occupational Analysis Field Center, the organization that compiles the data the Department of Labor uses in the SCO, confirmed that there are no precise updated data but that the regulatory estimate of approximately 200 sedentary unskilled occupations is still valid, because some of the 137 occupations in the current edition of the DOT comprise more than one of the separate occupations of which we take administrative notice.

With that preamble, here is the list of 137 occupations. Is there a lot of demand for Vamp-Strap Ironers [DOT 788.687-158] in your area?