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. A Full Time Equivalent (FTE) report would cover that but we seldom see FTE reports. I'm not sure why. Here are Social Security's numbers as of June with earlier headcount numbers for comparison:
- June, 2022 58,332
- March, 2022 59,257
- 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
13 comments:
Wasn't SSA staffed at about 87 thousand in the 70's?
Looks like the agency has been struggling to hang on to retain new hires since 2010. It takes about 2-3 years for a new hire to be useful to a field office. We've not been able to hang on to ours. They bail as soon as they start OTJ training. Meanwhile, those of us left slammed. At this point, any suggestion to "balance our workloads" is simply gaslighting.
They phased out a ton of clerical positions over time.
This is the direct result of terrible hiring authorities, poor budgets and poor leadership. Even if we got 20k hires today, I’m not sure we could get 2k qualified individuals as the measly pay we bring new hires in. As soon as they see unmanageable workloads they bail. It’s even worse when we discuss quality of work. Additionally, we cannot motivate staff to bid higher positions. What plan does leadership have ? Boost morale and ask us to do more with less
Our areas just hired 30 people. Training started about 3 weeks ago and they have already lost 9 people. Not looking good.
Not to mention the ones that have to train have their own workloads that take a backseat due to the amount of time spent training and reviewing every case the trainee touches. 🙄
Hiring is not solving the problems. Pay people more and offer overtime to existing employees. This is one way to slow the bleeding down.
The numbers are actually worse than they look because there are far more members of management now than there used to be 20-30 years ago. Back then, the agency didn't have the MSS position. You know, the position that they gerrymandered into existence in order to have supervisors that weren't counted as management in order to get around the restrictive management to employee ratios that were employed back then.
So, you have well over a thousand employees (probably actually closer to 2k than 1k, considering the larger offices have multiples) who are counted in that 58,332 headcount that aren't actually producing work. 30 years ago, those employees would have been used as claims reps in the FOs instead of acting as "supervisor lites".
Check out the Annual Statistical Supplement for work-year data, which includes FTEs, part-time, temporary and overtime
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2021/2f1-2f3.html#table2.f3
Table 1 in this old SSAB report has "on duty employment" between 1975 and 1998, which includes full-time, part-time, temporary, seasonal, and student employees
https://www.ssab.gov/research/how-the-social-security-administration-can-improve-its-service-to-the-public/
@7:24
Overtime sounds good, but most employees in my office aren't working it. They are burned out. We are in survival mode with 4 trained CR/TE and 5 trainees. basically 4 people doing the work of 9.
Same in my office. Overtime is nice until you’re so burned out you can’t wait to leave at the end of your shift.
I used to work credit and overtime a lot…now I can’t fathom working one second longer than required. It’s such a stressful time right now.
Few employees work overtime anymore.
This is fascinating. Thanks!
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