The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has posted updated numbers showing the headcount of employees at each agency. Note that these numbers do not tell the whole story. They don't account for part time employees nor for overtime. Overtime is a huge part of the story at Social Security. Here are Social Security's numbers as of last December with earlier headcount numbers for comparison:
- December, 2021 60,422
- September, 2021 59,808
- June 2021 59,707
- 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
- December 2016 63,364
- December 2015 65,518
- December 2014 65,430
- December 2013 61,957
- December 2012 64,538
- December 2010 70,270
- December 2009 67,486
- December 2008 63,733
Nor do they account for the fact that many of these employees are newbies who are still in training and have no on the job experience.
ReplyDeleteThe experience/brain drain is very real.
I guess this doesn't quite reflect the countless hoards that would "retire" before they came back to the offices, forcing SSA to shudder its doors forever.
ReplyDeletePool started.
I came on in 2010 in the aftermath of the Great Recession. It was very competitive, we had to take the ACWA exam and a few thousand people applied foran entry level job that 22 of us got. Now there’s no more ACWA exam and the new hires we get are not of the same quality. The economy has improved since then so it’s for sure harder to find quality folks but the agency does a lousy job recruiting. They should be more proactive in going to college campuses and recruiting about to be grads. While the job has its problems it still has a lot of perks, tons of career paths, and great benefits. You can make this job work for you if you try. I started out in an FO and now work in a CDPS component in an RO. I love it.
ReplyDeleteIn our FO, a good number of new hires quit or are fired within a year. Some who do neither turn out pretty good but many are barely doing their work. 20 years ago the quality of work was better and it was rare for someone to quit or even rarer, be fired.
DeleteAmongst the numerous problems with SSA, they fail to provide bonuses and merit raises to folks who have earned them. And, that hurts employee morale which leads to be people leaving and high employee turnover.
ReplyDeleteAre these people meeting the requirements for a bonus, or do they simply expect a bonus because they doing good work?
Delete747 are you implying that people who do their job well shouldn't get awards because "they are just doing their job". That is pretty petty thinking. If you have 10 people doing their job, but one does it very well, why shouldn't that person get recognized. Instead people get recognized for half assed training
DeleteIt's the old saying, those that can do, those that can't teach.
Im asking if there is a bonus structure or not. If there are bonuses available and people who meet the requirements don’t get a bonus, that’s bad management. If there are no bonuses available because these positions aren’t eligible for bonuses, then that’s just wishful thinking from employees.
DeleteWe do a lousy job of hiring but this is bc we crippled by hiring authorities. College grads are a dream as they constantly get trumped by vets. I love vets but we need long term solutions with career employees. I’ve found the occasional vet that is a gem but overall that pool is not great- sorry I know not a popular thing to say. We need FCIP authority back as this was why we were more successful until it was taken away. Hiring now is a nightmare
ReplyDeleteAnd, those numbers don't reflect losses that will occur based upon the recent early out. I am expecting more employees to take it this time, though it remains to be seen how high inflation and stock market crash may affect the numbers.
ReplyDeleteanon@7:45pm,
20 years ago the quality of training was so much better that there is no comparison possible. The CSRs we've recently hired are incapable of doing anything beyond the most basic without extreme handholding even after 2 years. And, they aren't stupid people either (one of them has a masters degree and is a certified mental health counselor). They just had the misfortune of accepting a job with an agency run by people with the managerial acumen of retarded versions of Beavis and Butt-head.
Of the four we have, three are already looking for new jobs and I can't blame them one bit.
@3:22… were offices reopened In December 2021? They weren’t? Oh well, great point anyway.
ReplyDeleteto 5:21
ReplyDeleteI left law school in 1976 amid very bad times to find a law job. I took the then Civil Service Exam (PACE) and scored 99%tile in three categories and slightly lower in the balance. I was offered a position as a CR GS 5/7/9 but chose instated a position in Washington for a different Agency because that was a GS 7/9/11 position. IN those days all CR;s were college graduates with scores roughly similar to mine.
Those people are virtually all gone now.
8:02 maybe thats why it says it doesnt reflect... now we know why you work where you work.
ReplyDeleteI see a lot of bashing of the new employees by the older employees. A lot. But it doesnt mention that it is the older employees that are in the positions of power, managers, directors, trainers, and on and on and on. Maybe the problems are not solely the responsibility of the new hires but on the older employees that perhaps are not as good as they think they are. Apparently they lack the ability to train and retain, which is a symptom of a larger problem than the people they are hiring.
ReplyDeleteYou may well be right on management. My office has fairly young management that were all hired post 2000.
DeleteMaybe the older workers are lousy trainers and management too. But they can process claims and do complicated A101s, something the more recent hires struggle with. Some recent hires are good but the bulk are not.
We don’t have time to devote to training. We have to work the front desk, answer the phones and take all the appointments.
DeleteI’m my office we have 3 trained employees, we had 4 trainees (one quit already) and one temp hire with zero training.
You tell me how we’re supposed to do all the work of the office and simultaneously train all the new hires.
Does the starting pay for many entry SSA jobs match what it was 20-30 years ago (adjusted for inflation of course)? What explains the shift to less qualified applicants the last 5-10 years? Its not like the pool of applicants knows how much of shitshow SSA is before they start working there.
ReplyDeleteVeterans preference. Almost all new hires are veterans.
DeleteI see, so you didnt have a backlog at all when you were being trained? Because I have never seen a time with no backlog and clearly remember messages coming out to work on the 999 day claims.
ReplyDeleteNobody had to work the front desk 20 years ago? Thats funny, even 20 years ago there were lines every morning and people had to take walkins instead of working the desk.
What I hear are a lot of tired old excuse, you dont train them and they dont know how to do the job. So you blame them for not being trained but you dont train them. I would quit on you too 2:36. Dont expect the other three to last long with toxic mentorship.
As for the A101, there is no reason in 2022 that you should force people to learn how to code in a dead computer language from the last century. I dont ask new hires to use telegraphs to send information.
Te A101...that's how some people still get paid. It's much better than when every block on a 101 was filled out or typed by hand. A101s do require some knowledge of how benefits are calculated which is too much for some.
DeleteRe training new people-management gives you 8 hours of CS or CSR work to do plus one is supposed to train someone as well during that time? It's not a matter of not wanting to train, there are some who like to do so and are good, it is a lack of time in the day.
People did work the front desk 20 years ago, competent ones who didn't need help all the time. There's a snowball effect. Less competent employees doing less work leading to more people coming in to get things corrected.
No genius. When I started I my office I was the only trainee with 22 other seasoned employees.
DeleteNow I one of 3 with 3 trainees and temp. See how that works?
It’s much different than when I was a trainee 20 years ago…much different.
So no, I don’t have time. You want your claimants paid right?
No, we just had more seasoned employees to devote to training.
DeleteWhy is that so hard to understand? Look at the numbers.
In my office, we have more trainees than seasoned employees!
My office also had 23 employees when I was a trainee.
Today we have 7
You’ve clearly never worked for SSA. You have absolutely no idea what goes on here.
DeleteIt has changed so drastically in the last 20 years, it’s almost unrecognizable.
The level of service produced reflects this degradation as an agency.
ReplyDeleteI was hired in 1981 as a Claims Specialist (Claims authorizer back then)
Everyone in my CA class had scored in the 90+ percentile on the PACE, in addition to having a BA degree or better. The PACE was a good test for measuring future ability to do the job well.
The SSA hires today have not passed any qualifying test, and the quality just isn't there.
What is needed is the return to testing, even if that is not politically correct.
I still do my own job well, my accuracy is close to 100%. But I'm not going to train, I don't have the personality or the desire to do that.
When did SSA get rid of the qualifying testing? What about direct shadowing of experienced employees--does that not work, or is it not practical?
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing with SSA training: it is virtually all virtual. Very little IRW training. Message to management: video training and cartoons, yes cartoons, are not real training. That is why we cannot keep people. We have a highly complex system and telling someone to watch a video does not prepare them to do the job, they get overwhelmed and quit.
ReplyDelete5:45 comment- I'm at DDS. We used to have shadowing, which was really helpful. We got rid of it though because seasoned analysts were too honest with the trainees, who had been hired without a full understanding of what the job entailed.
ReplyDelete6:49 is exactly right. Our online training is a joke, especially for those that had to do it entirely at home while we were shut down. At least when the training was done virtually through live video, questions could be asked real time and trainers could get a sense of when students were struggling with the topic. Yes, face to face training we expensive, but I have to believe that employees came out far more prepared.
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ReplyDeleteMandatory civil service tests for administrative careers were eliminated years ago. It's not just SSA. 80% of federal job openings now require no test.
The concern was that the tests were discriminatory against minority candidates.
PACE used to be the gold standard for professional civil service careers for college graduates. Carter set the wheels in motion to end the PACE test, and Reagan couldn't stop the process, although as I recall he complained about ending the test.
Long term employees seem to forget that they were trained, that the people that trained them had to work it into an already busy and full schedule and that during the training they were next to useless too.
ReplyDeleteCurrently what we are seeing is the employees are blaming everyone. They blame SSA for not hiring, they blame the people for coming to the office for help, they blame the trainees, they blame working in the office, they blame working from home. Just a lot of blaming.
It appears we know where the actual problem really is.
Look, there’s only 8 hours in the work day. I will do whatever they ask me to do, train a new employee, answer the phone, take appointments, fix someone else’s mistakes…whatever.
ReplyDeleteWhat I can get done, will get down. What I can’t…won’t.
The downside is we are evaluated based on number of claims cleared, not how helpful we were to a new trainee. People who file for benefits want to be paid timely and deserved to be paid timely. The lack of personnel to train and keep the work moving is hurting the public and employees.
DeleteI am sure someone fixes your mistakes as well, including typos ;)
ReplyDeleteI’m sure someone does! I never said I don’t make mistakes, in fact, I’m sure I’ve made many more mistakes than usual in the last two years because the main goal is to just move work. No staff, no time to process things, just move it off the list as quickly as possible so you can get to the next overwhelming list.
DeleteIt’s definitely ruining my mental health and no doubt causing undue hardship on the public.
It’s not good for anyone.
@434 In my field office about 90% of the people get a bonus. There are two different type of awards with the higher one in the $900 range and the lower ones around $500. It's not much incentive when you make $70-100K and the person who doesn't know much at all gets the same as you do. One should work hard, bonus or not(and once in a while there aren't any due to no funds), but bonuses/awards are too small and just about everyone gets one. If they were more like $5000 and only one of 5-10 people got one of those, there'd be more incentive.
ReplyDeleteAwards/bonuses are political in my office with only those who are not liked by management being the ones who don't receive them. A no incentive award/bonus is easier system for them as they don't have 80% of the employees upset that they didn't get the $5K bonus/award.
3:53 PM, No, I did not have to stop processing claims to work the front desk 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteWe sure worked the front desk at the DO 20 years ago and had at least 2 days a week on walkins.
ReplyDeleteWhen I started in my FO, we had 4 service reps so we almost never had to work the front desk or answer phones.
ReplyDeleteOver the years, the area I work in started to transition away from hiring service reps and wanted to have all claims reps in offices.
Fast forward to today, we have 16 fewer employees in my office than we did 20 years ago. Now we are at the front desk all day every day or answering phones all day every day and trying squeeze in other workloads between appointments.
Add in telework (which I chose not to participate in) and I’m at the front daily and never get much of anything else done unless I work late or do overtime.
A good reason to retire when one can. I am much less efficient as a service rep than a claims rep. It's no longer filling in or helping but something I do everyday. If only I had 1 or 2 claims to take daily vs 6 to 10.
DeleteSomeone in management seems to think that it's better to have all claims reps vs claims and service reps. It's too much to know to do efficiently for everyone. Most aren't that good at just their own job.
Yeah, if they offer early out in 2023, I’m gone unless something changes.
DeleteThey just beat you down into nothingness.
The #s don’t reflect the loss of institutional job knowledge
ReplyDelete@934 If 1000 seasoned employees quit and 1000 new ones are hired, the total numbers will be the same but you would have trainees taking the place of seasoned employees. This is always going to happen but the numbers of seasoned employees in some offices are reduced quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteThe employee head count continues to go down. Resignations in Operations trumped retirements last year & the DC for Operations told Congress expected losses will be even higher this year. The Agency is down to 58K employees, which includes 1K part-time employees. Budget, while an important factor, isn't the cause. Poor to non-existent "Senior Leadership" coupled with all the other problems we have are. The one grade where numbers are up is GS-15s. The Agency has over 700 of those.
ReplyDelete