Although not nearly enough to replace the number of employees lost since the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, 2006, there was a brief surge in hiring at Social Security after the agency finally got a budget. At times, Social Security was advertising well over one hundred job openings at a time. Unfortunately, that surge is over. Social Security is only advertising eight job openings at the moment and all but one of those openings closes by next Monday. It seems unlikely that there will be many more jobs advertised until Social Security gets its budget for the 2008 fiscal year. While that fiscal year begins on October 1, 2007, there are signs that there may be a protracted battle over that budget. It is not that the budget for the Social Security Administration is all that controversial. It is just that it is in the same budget package as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor and they have controversial budgets. President Bush is threatening a budget crisis if this budget bill contains a penny more than what he wants, which sounds like an extreme position that could result in problems.
It should be noted that while alot of offices were asked to advertise positions a few months ago, only a few were permitted to hire once applications were received. This really hurt the credibility of some offices, when 4 or 5 slots were advertised and no hiring occurred. SSA must find a way to get the staffing ratios up if they want any hope of addressing the time goals.
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