Backlog Just Gets Worse

Since February 2008, the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) has been publishing statistics it obtains from Social Security on the backlog of claims awaiting hearings before Administrative Law Judges (ALJs). This started about the time that Democrats became the majority party in Congress, as well as about the time that Michael Astrue became Commissioner of Social Security. You can make your own guess on the explanation for the timing.

I thought it would be interesting to extract the numbers to show what has been happening to the ALJ hearing backlog over this time period. Here are the national numbers, shown by the number of days of backlog existing at any given time:

• January 25, 2007 -- 508 days
• May 25, 2007 -- 523 days
• July 28, 2007 -- 528 days
• August 31, 2007 -- 523 days
• November 30, 2007 -- 500 days
• February 29, 2008 -- 511 days
• May 30, 2008 -- 523 days

The net result is that we are half a month further behind than we were a year and a half ago. Neither Michael Astrue becoming Commissioner of Social Security nor Democrats becoming the majority party in Congress has helped, other than, perhaps, keeping the backlog from growing more than it has.