What Are The Rules For Working While On SSDI? (2025)

How Can You Work While on Disability?

How you can work while receiving SSDI benefits is by following the rules of the Social Security Administration (SSA), which administers the federal program. Then, you just need to answer: What are the rules for working while on SSDI?

The SSA has several rules you must follow if you’re working or plan to start working again. Here they are:

Trial Period

If you’re receiving SSDI benefits, the SSA gives you a nine-month trial period to test whether you can work again. During that time, your benefits are unaffected as long as you report your work to the SSA and your disability continues. The nine months don’t have to be consecutive. The SSA counts your cumulative nine months over five years.

Extended Period of Eligibility

After your nine-month trial period, the SSA extends your eligibility for receiving SSDI benefits for 36 months, but with a limit. Your monthly earnings can’t be what the SSA deems “substantial.” That monthly earnings mark is $1,550 for 2024 and $1,620 for 2025. If you’re blind, the monthly limit on earnings is $2,590 in 2024 and $2,700 in 2025. If you earn more than the limit, your SSDI benefits may be reduced or stopped.

Work Expenses

The good news is that work expenses related to your disability can be deducted to help you stay under the earnings limit. If you have items or services that assist you in working, the SSA can deduct those expenses before deciding on your eligibility for benefits.

What the SSA considers work expenses are some of the obvious ones, such as transportation (taxi, paratransit, a special bus or any other transportation) and counseling services.

But you also can receive an earnings deduction for copays for disability-related prescriptions, a personal or job coach, a wheelchair or other special work equipment.

Reporting Your Work Status

If you’re working or plan to begin working, you or a caretaker must report it to the SSA as soon as possible. You can contact the SSA on the phone, in person or by mail. Here’s what and when you must report:

• When you start and stop working
• If your duties, hours or pay changes after you report you’re working
• If you begin paying disability-related expenses for work

Failing to report your work status could affect your SSDI benefits.

For someone who is blind, the SSA allows you to “freeze” your SSDI benefits if you earn too much money and your benefit stops. This keeps those lower-earning years from dragging down the amount of your benefit when it resumes.

For all recipients, if you later cannot continue working, you have up to five years to request your SSDI benefits be reinstated if you lose them by earning over the allowable limit. You don’t need to reapply or wait for benefits to start while your condition is under review.

How Much Money Can You Make on Social Security Disability?

During your nine-month trial period, you’re not limited on how much you can earn. However, once you reach a cumulative nine months of work within a five-year window, the SSA will consider you to be in your extended period of eligibility, and your earnings will be subject to a rule known as substantial gainful activity (SGA).

To be eligible for SSDI, you must be unable to participate in SGA. If you earn more than $1,550 per month in 2024 or $1,620 in 2025, the SSA can consider you to be engaged in SGA. For someone who is blind, the monthly amounts are $2,590 in 2024 and $2,700 in 2025.

The SSA can reduce or stop your monthly SSDI payments.

How Many Hours Can You Work on Disability?

Whether you work full-time or part-time, the SSA focuses on your substantial gainful activity, which it judges by your monthly earnings. It doesn’t set the average hours worked per week to remain eligible for SSDI. However, if working more hours leads to earning more than the SGA limit, you may have your benefits reduced or stopped.

What Happens to Your Medicare Coverage if Your Benefits Stop?

If your SSDI benefits stop, you don’t have to ask: What is a consequence of not having health insurance?

Your free Medicare Part A will continue if SSA stops paying you SSDI benefits because you exceeded the monthly earnings limit. Medicare Part A stays in effect for 93 months (7.75 years) after your nine-month trial work period.

After that, you will have to pay a health insurance premium, so you will want to ask, how much is health insurance? However, if you have Medicare Part B and your SSDI ends, you must pick up the premiums for the insurance. Alternatively, to cancel Part B, you must write the SSA.

Talk to ConsumerShield About SSDI and Insurance

If you’re receiving SSDI and want to work and can work, navigating the rules and requirements of the SSA to work and maintain your benefits can be challenging, sometimes even requiring a Social Security disability lawyer. But you don’t have to go it alone.

At ConsumerShield, we know insurance, including SSDI, and we can help you find the answers you need to feel confident in decisions you might make about working while on SSDI. Get in touch with us today.