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Feb 6, 2007

Social Security Workforce Dwindling

When considering what the budget for this fiscal year and the next will do to the Social Security Administration, one first needs to look at what has happened to Social Security over the last fiscal year. The federal Office of Personnel Management posts figures for employment at each agency by quarter. The figures are not yet available for the last calendar quarter of 2006 or any part of 2007, but they are available for the end of the 2005 fiscal year, which was September 2005, and for the entire 2006 fiscal year.
September 2005 66,147
December 2005 65,777
March 2006 64,297
June 2006 64,814
September 2006 63,647
This shows that the number of employees at Social Security decreased by 2,500 exactly in the 2006 fiscal year. This was a 3.8% decrease. This was without a hiring freeze and in the face of an increasing workload and at a time when Social Security already had huge backlogs.

By the way, if you are wondering why the workforce bumped up in June 2006, I think I can explain it. That was crunch time for the initial implementation of Medicare Part D. Social Security got some extra funding for that, although not much, since the bump in employment was so minor and the impact upon the agency so large.

The employment level proposed for Social Security in the President's 2008 fiscal year budget is 59,800, which is a 6% decrease from the level as of September 2006.

Basically, it appears that Social Security is being budgeted into a 3-4% staffing decrease per year, but, of course, there has been a change in control of Congress, so the result for the 2008 fiscal year budget may be different, although the difference for the 2007 fiscal year budget, which will be passed by a Congress controlled by Democrats, looks to be even worse, a hiring freeze.

Unless there is a turnaround in Social Security's operating budget, it is hard for me to see anything ahead over the next five to ten years other than a complete breakdown in Social Security's ability to get its work done, with it taking dozens of calls to get through on Social Security's 800 number, people lined up before dawn outside Social Security offices, months long backlogs at almost every stage of every process at Social Security and Social Security's hearings and appeals process breaking down to the point that it becomes almost worthless. If that sounds impossibly bleak, ask yourself how Social Security can cope with a 30-40% decrease in its staffing over the next ten years. Without a major turnaround, that is what is ahead.

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