The agency has lost roughly 7,800 employees, forcing widespread staff reassignments that have improved telephone response times while reducing the share of initial claims appointments scheduled within 30 days.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The Social Security Administration continues to face staffing shortages and disrupted workloads more than a year after workforce reductions associated with the Department of Government Efficiency eliminated nearly 8,000 positions.
The agency, which distributes retirement, survivor and disability benefits to approximately 75 million Americans each month, has lost about 14% of its workforce since the DOGE-led cost-cutting initiative began targeting its operations, according to a report on conditions inside Social Security offices.
Agency leaders say new technology, increased automation and changes in how employees are assigned have improved some customer-service measurements. Current and former workers, however, say the departure of approximately 7,800 employees continues to place severe pressure on field offices, claims processing and in-person services.
Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano assumed leadership after the reductions and has undertaken a broad modernization effort intended to move more services online and automate work previously handled by employees.
Bisignano has said the technological changes will eventually save the equivalent of 2,500 full-time work hours. The agency has also opened recruitment for approximately 1,000 positions.
Those initiatives have not yet replaced the experience or capacity lost during the workforce reduction, according to employees and union representatives.
“The look on everybody’s face is they’re beat down, they are demoralized, they’re tired,” said Chris Delaney, a claims specialist and local union president representing Social Security employees in Hudson, New York.
The American Federation of Government Employees Council 220, which represents field office workers, said most of the agency’s approximately 1,200 field offices lost at least 10% of their employees during the reductions.
Social Security has responded in part by moving thousands of workers away from their regular duties and assigning them to answer calls placed to the agency’s national 800 number.
Internal agency figures showed that approximately 1,500 field office employees were assigned to telephone duties as of July 6. About 2,500 workers had been reassigned across the agency.
The redeployments, combined with improvements to the telephone system, have reduced the average time required to answer calls.
The agency’s average speed of answering fell to five minutes in May, compared with 11 minutes during the same period one year earlier.
That measurement does not fully reflect the time experienced by all callers. Beneficiaries who choose to receive a callback are recorded as having no wait, and Social Security no longer publicly reports the average amount of time required to complete those callbacks.
Bisignano told lawmakers during a congressional hearing last month that the improvement came from matching available employees with the areas experiencing the greatest demand.
“I’d like to make this more complicated, but it’s not. It’s putting people where the work is,” Bisignano said. “It’s building technology in a modern-day fashion.”
Frontline employees say that directing field office workers to national telephone lines has improved one service category by taking time away from others.
Internal figures showed that 64.6% of appointments for initial benefit claims were scheduled within 30 days as of July 6. One year earlier, 78.1% of those appointments had been scheduled within the same period.
Some regions recently reported rates below 45%.
Union officials said employees assigned to the 800 number have less time for face-to-face appointments, reviewing documents and processing claims for people in their local communities.
“It’s extremely disruptive to the workloads,” said Jeremy Maske, a union president representing frontline Social Security employees in Iowa and Nebraska. “If you’re assigned to the 800 number once a week, that’s taking a fifth of your time to answer those phones.”
The competing performance figures illustrate the challenge facing the agency as it attempts to serve tens of millions of beneficiaries with a substantially smaller workforce.
Moving employees to telephone operations can reduce call-answering times, but the same workers are then unavailable to process pending claims or meet with beneficiaries who require assistance at field offices.
Bisignano has cited other indicators that he says demonstrate progress, including shorter waits for customers who already have appointments, reduced processing backlogs and quicker decisions on disability claims.
The agency is also testing a centralized system for scheduling appointments nationwide. Under the proposed approach, appointments would no longer be arranged exclusively through individual local offices.
Social Security has expanded online options as well, including the ability to request replacement Social Security cards electronically.
Agency leaders have pledged not to close field offices and have said beneficiaries will continue to have the option of obtaining help in person, by telephone or online.
Advocates for older Americans, people with disabilities and low-income beneficiaries warn that digital services cannot fully replace trained employees, particularly for people with complicated claims or limited access to technology.
Many beneficiaries require assistance documenting disabilities, resolving payment errors, reporting changes in income or family circumstances, or navigating eligibility rules that cannot always be addressed through automated systems.
The loss of experienced workers can also have effects that are not immediately visible in broad performance measurements, including delayed case reviews, inconsistent guidance and longer resolution times for unusual or disputed claims.
“You can’t lose that many people in that haphazard of a manner without an impact on services,” said Devin O’Connor, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “The question is where or when the harm will be felt.”
The agency’s current strategy depends on technology improvements, centralized scheduling and targeted employee reassignments to compensate for the 14% reduction in staffing.
Although those changes have produced faster reported telephone response times, the decline in timely initial-claim appointments suggests that pressure has shifted into other areas of Social Security’s operations.
With approximately 75 million Americans depending on monthly benefits, the agency must now balance modernization and cost reductions against the need to maintain accessible, accurate and timely service for beneficiaries whose cases often require direct assistance from experienced employees.
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