Mar 24, 2026

You Can’t Cut Personnel Significantly Without Also Cutting Service Significantly

      From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

The Trump Administration deliberately caused the loss of an unprecedented number of workers from the Social Security Administration (SSA) in its first year in office, reducing staffing by roughly 7,500 employees (13 percent) from January 2025 to January 2026. 

New data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reveal more about how the resulting short-staffing of critical functions is degrading service for the largely older, bereaved, and severely disabled people who most rely on SSA and creating challenges that will be difficult to turn around without major changes. …

One area of SSA operations affected by both staffing losses and reduced transparency is the large and growing backlog of hearings for people appealing SSA’s denial of their application for disability benefits. The number of cases pending rose by more than 73,000 from January 2025 to February 2026, threatening harm for some of the most vulnerable people SSA serves …

By January 2026, SSA had fewer employees than at any time since 1967, when the agency was not yet responsible for administering Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and served 52 million fewer beneficiaries. …

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