The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has posted updated numbers showing the headcount of employees at each agency. Here they are as of March with earlier headcount numbers for comparison:
- March 2021 60,675
- December 2020 61,816
- September 2020 61,447
- June 2020 60,515
- March 2020 60,659
- December 2019 61,969
- December 2018 62,946
- December 2017 62,777
- September 2017 62,297
- June 2017 61,592
- March 2017 62,183
- December 2016 63,364
- December 2015 65,518
- December 2014 65,430
- December 2013 61,957
- December 2012 64,538
- September 2011 67,136
- December 2010 70,270
- December 2009 67,486
- December 2008 63,733
By the way, Full Time Equivalent (FTE) numbers would be more meaningful since those take overtime work into consideration. Social Security isn't posting those numbers as far as I know. I'd love to see them.
ReplyDeleteThe headcounts are deceiving without overtime information. There have been drastic cuts in overtime this year. This yields the same result on the workloads, as cutting the number of employees would have.
I have not seen such little OT in PC7 for disability claims, for many years. For the last several months: Zero overtime for Disability Examiners, Claims Specialists. And very limited overtime for benefit authorizers: Saturday only.
Claims Specialists were often assigned high priority workloads for Saturday overtime, such as ALJ allowances. Now with no OT, these cases are mixed in with the other cases to be worked during regular time.
Apparently it will go down if they are not allowed to work from home any longer and they all retire. Should be about 7 people left, oddly it wont slow things down much.
ReplyDeleteWe can anticipate a brain-drain sometime soon. I am guessing a substantial number of older SSA employees continue to work from home because it is convenient. I imagine that there will be an overwhelming number of retirements once agency executives announce a return to regular duty stations.
DeleteWould love to see the changes in employment numbers within just OHO, and just the number of ALJs.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it feels like all of the decrease in employment numbers came from just our one office.
ReplyDeleteOvertime could be a short term solution, but SSA really needs to hire more people and start training them,
Many employees in Operations are in their 60's and they are not going to stay much longer. It takes years to learn how to do some of these jobs.
@ 12:34...good point, no overall reduction in numbers, but definitely shifting where people work. With the growing availability of full-time telework/virtual assignments, many positions are being centralized and those people are no longer working for their local office. 4 employees in my office recently reassigned to some sort of virtual job.
ReplyDelete10:25 they said the same thing a few years ago when the first wave of SSI CRs started to retire off. One thing I noticed then was that things kept rolling along just like before. It is a convoluted program with antique software but it really isnt any harder than a lot of things. It takes a while to come up to speed in a lot of jobs. The sun will continue to rise and set as usual.
ReplyDeleteAs a former CR in a DO I never found it that difficult, just the occasional oddball thing you have to research. I did both TII and TXVI and was a Medicare Outreach Coordinator. I found it not to be my cup of tea, it was assembly line work, very repetitive and not very fulfilling.
ReplyDeleteThis is a unique situation and time. Because SSA employees have been working for home for a year,,many have become eligible to retire during that time period. A
Also , after teleworking for a year there will quite naturally be a desire for most employees to keep do that rather than returning to the office. Employees will not want to resume commuting, facing any remaining virus dangers in the office. and give up their present lifestyle.
Most of those SSA employees who have a choice to avoid returning to the office by retiring, will do so. That is my plan, telework until I'm told to return, then give notice and put in my retirement papers.
Others in my unit have said the same thing they will retire rather than return to the office.
SSA retirement wave which would follow a call back to the office, would be like a tidal wave: Huge and unprecedented in the history of SSA.
I am willing to bet that the WAVE will be a ripple.
ReplyDeleteBye Felicia
I work in a DO and while I think the retirement wave will be substantial, I think the only thing that will come of it is reducing an already inefficient process just a bit more. I’ve been with the agency almost 20 years and it’s gotten worse each year. My office had nearly 25 people when I started. Today, we have 11. That might not sound that awful, except one of those is management. Two have used COVID as an opportunity to leave. Two others have quit during the past year while in quarantine and two more are leaving as soon as they call us back to the office. Oh, and two others are trainees. So, we effectively have 5 people in production.
ReplyDeleteThe good news is we’re getting a couple of new employees. The bad news is, all the training is virtual which has proven to be a huge mess. Even if we were in the office, we just don’t have the bodies to handle 4 people who need mentoring.
As others have pointed out, the job isn’t what I would call “hard”. It can be complicated at times and it can certainly be overwhelming for those who have to shoulder the work of 20 plus people with only about 4-5 that have experience. Then the new people get frustrated because they’re buried right when they get out of training.
I see people bashing the SSA employees a lot on here but I’ll be honest…I don’t ignore calls or claims or attorney fees or anything else on purpose. I’m one person asked to do the work of many and I just cannot find the time to do all of it…oh and train a new employee or two!!! I do what I can, when I can, the best I can…whether I’m working from home or in the office.
My guess is that some who were going to retire in mid 2020 to now may have hung on since no point in retiring as one couldn't go anywhere. Those will retire when the offices reopen if they haven't retired already. Three in my office that were planning on retiring in two years are still going to keep working whether they have to go back to the office or not.
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ReplyDelete8:43 Your comment holds true for me. I work in a payment center and am now eligible to retire. But why retire when I can telework every day? I love telework and besides there was not much else to do during the pandemic. Couldn't travel, visit, or go out to eat.
But if we are called back that, is a different story. And from what I've heard I'm not the only one who plans to leave rather than return.
I'm actually afraid our personnel office and OPM will be swamped with retirement applications if telework is rescinded, and my retirement may take longer than usual to process.
ReplyDeleteThe cuts in overtime this year have yielded the same result, as cutting the number of full time employees at SSA would have. These cuts have resulted in increased backlogs and wait times.
It won't matter if the offices reopen or not, the backlogs are not going to go away unless OT is restored.
Even if OT is restored now it will take months for PC7 to dig out of the hole that the OT cuts created. Post entitlement actions are sitting for months, sometimes for almost a year, before being worked.
@1:04 "my retirement may take longer than usual to process" lol wtf? You tell them you are leaving and go, what is there to process? I say this as someone who "processes" retirements, there is nothing to do. We deactivate your computer access and make sure you don't owe the govt. money.
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ReplyDeleteOPM isn't as efficient processing retirement claims as SSA is. That's what will take longer. One has to be prepared to be without income for a number of months. It may be just one or two but if there is a big wave, it could be more. If you process OPM retirements, FERS and CSRS, the word on the street is the process is much slower than it should be.