Below is a chart from Social Security showing the number of claims for Disability Insurance Benefit taken, sent for adjudication and approved since 1996. Note that everything declined during the pandemic but the decline seems to be part of a longer term decline that has been ongoing since about 2011. We do not have such a chart for SSI disability claims. There's no doubt, however, that an SSI chart would show a precipitous decline during the pandemic.
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https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/ssi_asr/2019/sect08.html has SSI claims through 2019. Overall and in the child and senior age groups, applications have dropped steadily since a 2010 peak; applications for adults with disabilities increased a bit in 2019 but were still well below the 2010 peak.
NOSSCR published data from OARO last fall showing that 2020 SSI applications were only about 70% of 2019 levels. Not sure if it's picked up at all since then, but SSI certainly saw a very big decline in 2020 and is probably pretty low in 2021 as well.
Thank goodness. I hope they continue to decline. Who wishes for people to be disabled?!?!?
OCACT's presentation on OASDI and SSI adult disability receipts at the DDS level (through March 2021):
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/presentations/scgoss_20210520.pdf
And you can get the number of SSI awards from Table 9 at https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/ssi_monthly/2021-05/table09.html (data for 2020-2021; look in older editions to piece together more history). They're awards, not applications, but still useful. Precipitous decline since pandemic. The people who need SSI seem particularly vulnerable to field-office closures and to the bottlenecks in the health-care and even postal systems that have made everything cramp up.
The part of puzzle that is constantly overlooked is that many people who would be filing for SSI are not due to to the generous, extended, unemployment benefits that Americans have been receiving for nearly a year and a half that disqualify them from consideration.
What is being overlooked is that if they were working and got unemployment they were not eligible for SSI.
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