Nov 24, 2015

ALJ Productivity Has Plummeted

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Flip the coin. Post the agree rate. Drafts per day means little when they were trash and all coming back. The idea is that drafts are now better quality so you have to view productivity against agree rate.

Anonymous said...

Not so. AALJ and Coburn/Issa congressional contingent formed an unholy alliance against high producing ALJ's. They are all gone, and Colvin has been backed down from requiring production from ALJ's beyond what is comfortable for them. Everyone involved likes the slowdown in decision rates because less money is paid out to claimants and the balance sheet looks better.

It's just that nasty growing backlog that will eventually ruin the party. . .

Anonymous said...

It's yin and yang, quality vs quantity. Congress will never fund the agency enough for both, so pick one and watch the other suffer until Congress calls hearings about the other, and the pendulum will swing back.

Anonymous said...

8:38 Anonymous is dead on.

The AALJ Union may have lost their ridiculous lawsuit, but they ended up winning the war.

Anonymous said...

Ha - the one time you choose to emphasize the forest instead of a tree. If you described this graph the same way you describe the gazillion other graphs you've posted of benefits paid, recipients in pay status, etc., showing a doubling over the years but an insignificant dip in the last month, you'd have headlined this one as "ALJ Productivity Is Climbing."

Anonymous said...

How much of this dip is due to the hiring of new judges who cannot be expected to be as productive as those who have been on the job for a while? The uptick in 2015 would certainly support that given that many of them have now been on the job more than one year.

Anonymous said...

No more claim folders stamped with a smiley face.