After an individual is approved for Social Security Disability benefits, he or she may attempt to return to work. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has provided a trial work period for those receiving disability benefits as incentive to return to work.
The trial work period lasts for a total of nine months. During a trial work period, you will continue to receive Social Security Disability (SSD) payments as usual. Only at the expiration of that trial work period may your benefits potentially be affected.
It is important to note that a trial work period consists of nine months in total, but only those months in which you earn more than $940 per month count toward the trial work period. This amount is reviewed by the Social Security Administration (SSA) and adjusted each year. Therefore, you should check the financial limits before engaging in any type of work.
You should also understand that the months that count toward a trial work period do not need to be consecutive. This means any month in a rolling 60-month calendar, which is what the SSA uses for calculating trial work periods, will potentially be counted toward your nine months.
After the Trial Work Period
After the nine month trial work period has ended, the SSA will review your earnings record to determine if you were able to maintain Substantial Gainful Activity (SGA) during that time. This is essentially a determination of whether or not the work you performed earned you a gainful living.
SGA is defined by the SSA as any earnings at or above a certain threshold. That threshold is evaluated and potentially adjusted annually to account for inflation and changes in the cost of living. The 2021 SGA threshold is set at $1,350 per month for a non-blind, single recipient of SSD benefits.
If your average earnings during your trial work period hits or exceeds that SGA threshold, then your SSD benefits will be terminated by the SSA. If however, your earnings during your trial work period remain below the SGA threshold, then your benefits will continue.
Extended Period of Eligibility
If your benefits continue and you are still able to work, then you will enter what is known as an extended period of eligibility (EPE). During this period, which lasts for 36 months following the completion of your initial trial work period, you will remain eligible for SSD payments. During the EPE though, the amount of your monthly earned income will determine whether or not you receive a disability check each month.
In other words, during the 36 months following the completion of your trial work period, any month in which your earnings hit or exceed the SGA threshold is a month in which you will not receive an SSD payment. Any month in which your earned income is below that threshold, you will receive an SSD check as usual.
The first month that follows the end of your 36-month EPE in which you earn at or above the SGA will mean your SSD benefit eligibility ends. If for example, you exceed the SGA in month 37, then you will no longer receive SSD benefits, even if the following month you do not hit the SGA.
If you become disabled again following the expiration of your EPE, you can apply for expedited reinstatement of benefits, as long as it has been less than five years since you were receiving SSD benefits before. If it’s been more than five years since you were last on SSD, then you must submit a new application for disability benefits if you become disabled again.
During your trial work period, you can try to go back to work while receiving Social Security disability benefits without losing your eligibility.
Several Social Security programs allow SSDI beneficiaries to try returning to work without jeopardizing their entitlement to Social Security disability benefits. The first of these programs is the trial work period.
What Is the Trial Work Period for SSDI?
During the first nine months that you return to work, you'll continue to receive your SSDI benefits, even if you work more than the amount that Social Security considers "substantial gainful activity," or "SGA." (SGA generally means that you are earning $1,470 or more per month, in 2023.) At the end of nine months of work, your trial work period is over and your benefits will stop if you're working more than the SGA amount.
You're entitled to nine trial work months during your trial work period, but a month doesn't count toward your nine months if you make less than $1,050 (gross) or if you work less than 80 hours per month in self-employment (regardless of the amount you earned). Your nine trial work months don't need to be consecutive, so there can be gaps between the trial work months that count toward your nine-month limit.
Once you've used nine trial work months during any five-year period, you have exhausted your trial work period and are generally not entitled to another trial work period. But there are a few situations where you can get another trial period:
- Your SSDI benefits end due to working and you become entitled to benefits again by submitting a new application for SSDI benefits.
- Your SSDI benefits end due to working but you become entitled to benefits again through "expedited reinstatement."
- You don't use up your nine months in a five-year period.
If you use fewer than nine trial work months during any five-year period, you might be able to get another set of nine trial work months down the road. Trial work months more than five years old are no longer counted, so your right to nine months of trial work will start over, and you can end up getting more than nine trial work months.
In addition, if your disability benefits stopped for a period but you became eligible for benefits again through expedited reinstatement (see below), you're eligible for a new trial work period 24 months after your disability benefits are reinstated.
What Is the Extended Period of Eligibility (EPE)?
After your trial work period is over, Social Security will decide if you are doing substantial gainful activity. If you are doing SGA, you'll lose your benefits, but they won't stop right away, and they won't be terminated permanently.
Immediately after the ninth trial work period (TWP) month, you will enter a 36-month "extended period of eligibility," or "EPE," where you are entitled to special rules. During the 36 consecutive months after your trial work period (your EPE), your eligibility to receive a monthly SSDI check is determined on a month-to-month basis. If you don't make above the SGA amount in a particular month, you can still get your SSDI check. If you do make over the SGA amount, you won't get a check for that month.
Here's how it works. If your countable gross income is at or below the SGA amount for any month during your EPE, you're eligible for your full SSDI benefit amount for that month. In any month in which your countable gross income exceeds the SGA amount ($1,470 in 2023), you aren't entitled to benefits for that month. However, there's a one-time exception to this rule known as the "grace period." You're eligible for benefits for the first month and the following two consecutive months during your EPE in which you work above the SGA amount. After that, your benefits will stop if you continue to earn above the SGA amount.
Calculating your income during EPE. For your EPE, your countable gross income is your gross income minus any impairment-related work expenses (IRWE) you have. Subsidies approved by Social Security are also subtracted from your income. (Note that impairment-related work expenses and subsidies aren't subtracted from your income during the trial work period.)
If you're self-employed, a special formula is used to determine your annual net earnings from self-employment, and the resulting amount is divided by 12 (or by the applicable number of months, if you worked in self-employment for less than a full year). This determines your monthly countable income.
What happens after your EPE ends? Beginning in the 37th month after the end of your trial work period, your EPE ends. Your eligibility for benefits will end the first month in which your countable gross income exceeds the SGA amount, and your eligibility will no longer be determined on a month-to-month basis. But if you become disabled again after your EPE, you have a period of time called "expedited reinstatement" in which you won't need to reapply for SSDI to get benefits.
What Is Expedited Reinstatement?
You can file an application for expedited reinstatement if your countable gross income falls below the SGA amount or stops altogether at any time within five years after your benefits stopped due to work activity. (After this five-year period is up, you must file a brand new application for benefits to re-enter the disability system.)
If you file an application for expedited reinstatement, Social Security will pay you benefits for six months while the agency processes your application. Even if Social Security denies your application for expedited reinstatement, Social Security will let you keep the benefits paid while your application was pending.
The odds, however, are in your favor when you file an application for expedited reinstatement. Before denying your claim, Social Security must prove that you have medically improved enough to work since the last time you were receiving benefits. In contrast, if you file a new application for benefits, you must prove that you are medically disabled before your claim will be granted.
These rules apply to persons who are disabled by impairments other than statutory blindness; special rules apply to blind beneficiaries.