Number of Employees At Social Security

The Office of Personnel Management has an on-line database that tracks the number of employees by agency. Here is some data on the number of SSA employees as of certain months over the last few years:

September 1998 65,629
September 1999 63,957
September 2000 64,521
September 2001 65,377
September 2002 64,648
September 2003 64,903
September 2004 65,238
March, 2006 64,297

What this shows is that Social Security employment has remained relatively constant -- in the face of what is almost certainly the largest increase in the agency's workload since the 1930s, as baby boomers age into their prime years for disability claims. Disability claims are only a small fraction of the benefits paid by Social Security but account for more than half of Social Security's workload.