Opinion of the Court
including professional qualifications and many years’ experience; suppose, too, she has a history of giving sound testimony about job availability in similar cases (perhaps before the same ALJ). Now say that she testifies about the approximate number of various sedentary jobs an applicant for benefits could perform. She explains that she arrived at her figures by surveying a range of representative employers; amassing specific information about their labor needs and employment of people with disabilities; and extrapolating those findings to the national economy by means of a well-accepted methodology. She answers cogently and thoroughly all questions put to her by the ALJ and the applicant’s lawyer. And nothing in the rest of the record conflicts with anything she says. But she never produces her survey data. Still, her testimony would be the kind of evidence—far “more than a mere scintilla”—that “a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support” a finding about job availability. Consolidated Edison, 305 U. S., at 229. Of course, the testimony would be even better—more reliable and probative—if she had produced supporting data; that would be a best practice for the SSA and its experts.[1] And of course, a different (maybe less qualified) expert failing to produce such data might offer testimony that is so feeble, or contradicted, that it would fail to clear the substantial-evidence bar. The point is only—as, again, Biestek accepts—that expert testimony can sometimes surmount that bar absent underlying data.
But if that is true, why should one additional fact—a
- ↑ The SSA itself appears to agree. In the handbook given to vocational experts, the agency states: “You should have available, at the hearing, any vocational resource materials that you are likely to rely upon” because “the ALJ may ask you to provide relevant portions of [those] materials.” SSA, Vocational Expert Handbook 37 (Aug. 2017), https://www.ssa.gov/appeals/public_experts/Vocational_Experts_(VE)_Handbook-508.pdf (as last visited Mar. 28, 2019).
