DDS Allowance Rates

      Social Security has posted statistics on allowance rates at the initial and reconsideration levels on disability claims.

Social Security Disability and Supplemental Security
Income (SSI) Disability Claims
Allowance Rates1/
Initial and Reconsideration Adjudicative Level
Fiscal Year 2026
by Nation, Region and State
	INITIAL	RECONSIDERATION
NATIONAL	35.9	14.9
NATIONAL - DDS ONLY	35.9	14.9
BOSTON	39.2	15.4
CT	41.7	14.0
ME	39.3	14.3
MA	35.3	15.5
NH	44.0	20.3
RI	44.0	15.7
VT	45.7	16.0
NEW YORK	35.1	14.0
NJ	33.0	13.9
NY	35.6	14.0
PR2/	42.0	14.3
PHILADELPHIA	35.7	14.1
DE	39.1	12.5
DC	33.0	12.5
MD	43.0	16.7
PA	35.7	13.4
VA	36.3	15.4
WV	33.9	12.3
VA EST3/	22.1	13.2
ATLANTA	36.3	15.7
AL	32.8	15.6
FL	42.0	15.7
GA	35.2	21.1
KY	29.9	9.6
MS	35.4	15.1
NC	37.3	14.2
SC	37.3	16.1
TN	34.3	13.6
MS EST3/	0.0	0.0
CHICAGO	35.7	13.7
IL	36.4	16.9
IN	33.4	11.3
MI	34.6	13.5
MN	39.1	9.9
OH	36.3	12.8
WI	35.9	15.7
DALLAS	36.0	16.2
AR	35.1	12.2
LA	37.7	17.8
NM	41.1	20.3
OK	33.6	14.5
TX	36.5	15.5
AR EST3/	33.6	19.0
OK EST3/	32.1	0.0
KANSAS CITY	39.7	12.9
IA	40.0	10.3
KS	43.6	20.7
MO	38.1	13.0
NE	41.3	13.1
DENVER	35.4	14.1
CO	31.9	13.3
MT	38.5	18.2
ND	40.1	17.4
SD	39.4	11.1
UT	37.3	14.8
WY	40.7	14.2
SAN FRANCISCO	33.8	14.9
AZ	29.6	14.8
CA	34.5	15.1
HI	36.8	15.7
NV	35.2	12.8
SEATTLE	35.6	13.2
AK	54.5	33.0
ID	35.1	11.8
OR	36.7	14.3
WA	33.7	12.5
FEDERAL4/	54.1	18.3
San Juan DPU	5/	5/
Atlanta DPB	0.0	0.0
Chicago DPB	91.1	25.0
Kansas City DPB	0.0	0.0
New York DPB	4.2	1.1
Philadelphia DPB	0.0	0.0
San Francisco DPB	0.0	0.0
Boston DPU	5/	5/
Dallas DPU	5/	5/
Denver DPU	5/	5/
Seattle DPU	5/	5/
Philadelphia DPU	5/	5/
OCO	0.0	0.0
INTPSC	44.0	21.2
Guam	48.1	24.8
Virgin Islands	5/	5/
1/Allowance and denial rates equal 100%.
2/Includes Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI, Title II) only as there is no Supplemental Security Income (SSI, Title XVI) in Puerto Rico.
3/ EST DDS data comes from four extended service team sites in Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Virginia. Workload from State DDSs is transferred into these sites.
4/Federal Site data comes from the following SSA sites:  Office of Central Operations; International Payment Service Center; Guam; the Virgin Islands; and Disability Program Branches in the Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco Regions.
5/The federal sites that have zero allowance rates are sites where they do not have their own legacy system and complete cases by remotely logging into the legacy system of the state they are assisting.  Therefore, the allowance information rolls up into the state they are assisting.
Note:  Allowance rates are on determinations completed by State Disability Determination Services (DDSs) and other components which make disability determinations.  For workload balancing issues, cases may be transferred to other states or to SSA components for determinations.  Determinations are not always done in the applicants' state of residence.
Cases processed in the ESTs and Federal sites DO NOT include cases under QDD, CAL, and other fast track case screening.  Accordingly, allowance rates in those sites are NOT comparable to regular State DDSs. Allowance rates equal to zero indicate no cases.  High rates may indicate very small numbers of cases.
Produced By: SSA/LDP/DP/ARTS/DSSIT
Date Produced: October 28, 2026
Data Source: SSA SAOR (State Agency Operations Report)

“Page Count”?

      I have heard something about a “page count” limit on scheduling hearings, as in, I think, an ALJ is expected to schedule hearings files encompassing so many pages of records per month rather than a simple number of hearings.

     Can anyone enlighten me on how long this has been around and how it’s working? Also, what’s the “page count” quota per month?

     By the way, shouldn’t page count figure into fees for representing claimants? They have to trudge through those same huge files.

     One thing not appreciated by those who don’t have recent hands on experience with Social Security disability files is just how much medical records have metastasized over the last ten years or so due to medical record-keeping programs and increased specialist referrals, among other things. This has dramatically increased the size of Social Security disability claim files. They’re out of hand. 

I’m From The Government and I’m Here To Help You

      From Clarin:

In an effort to identify and address irregularities within the federal benefits system, the US Social Security Administration (SSA) has launched in-person checks targeting retirees, pensioners and recipients of federal benefits. …

In-person checks are not random, nor do they cover the entire retiree population. Instead, they primarily target recipients of two programs: Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI).

Furthermore, checks are triggered when SSA systems detect discrepancies in reported data, mismatches between tax records and actual income, or address changes that were not reported within required deadlines. …

     Some may remember the old centenarian project at Social Security. Agency employees were sent out supposedly to congratulate those turning 100. The purpose was actually to make sure the claimants were still alive. 

     I guess that employees will attend to this chore in their spare time.

Graph Showing Number Of People Drawing Social Security Disability Benefits — Why The Drop?

 

From Social Security

Disability Determination Backlogs To Soar

    From David Weaver, a retired Social Security employee, writing for The Hill:

Projections indicate that, in less than two years, there will be a staggering 2.5 million people in Social Security’s disability backlog. That figure is higher than the population of 20 U.S. states and territories. Thus, as we look to the midterm elections next year, President Trump will be dealing with a very large group of Americans who aren’t receiving timely decisions on their benefit applications.

About 70 percent of the projected backlog at the end of fiscal 2026 will be at the initial level of determination. ...

The backlog could easily turn out to be well above 2.5 million cases if current levels of government staffing decline, assumed productivity gains among government workers fail to materialize, or the country experiences a recession and displaced workers with health problems turn to Social Security for help. ...

The large backlog will be a national driver of homelessness, a situation that occurs with some frequency among disability applicants.  ...

Trump’s first instinct may be to look for a technological fix. His executive order creating DOGE stated its purpose as “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” In practice, however, DOGE has become focused on personnel policy and cost cutting, rather than bleeding-edge technology. 

Social Security recently summarized its DOGE-related activities. If members of the public thought the young engineers of DOGE were going to revolutionize technology in the government, they will be disappointed. The Social Security list is basically composed of budget cuts, including two big items: a reduction in the agency’s technology budget and a hiring freeze applied to federal employees and state workers who help process disability claims.  ...

    I am pessimistic about the situation. The present course can lead only to disaster but this will not be apparent to the Trump Administration until the disaster is well upon us. They will then try desperately to turn the spigot back on only to find out that there's only so much that can be done until new personnel are hired and trained and that takes quite some time. And, of course, Weaver is only writing here about impending backlogs of disability determinations and that's only one part of the problem. Addressing field office, teleservice center and payment center backlogs, which will also mushroom, will be even more difficult, especially with a gutted management structure.

Inflation And Social Security Disability Recipients

     From The Bulletin on Retirement and Disability:

... Social Security Disability (SSD) program beneficiaries, like other consumers, have been negatively affected by inflation over the past several years. In a survey from June of 2023, more than half (59 percent) of SSD program beneficiaries reported higher prices for the disability-related goods and services they need to purchase, and more than one-quarter reported reducing food spending to cover disability-related costs, Zachary Morris and Stephanie Rennane found in Examining the Impact of Inflation on the Economic Security of Disability Program Beneficiaries (NBER RDRC Paper NB23-08).

Using new survey data, the researchers found that 82 percent of beneficiaries reported out-of-pocket expenses related to their disability, with average annual spending of $4,412 and median spending of $384 as of June 2023. Fifty-nine percent of beneficiaries reported higher spending on disability-related goods and services compared to two years earlier. In response to these rising costs, 25 percent of beneficiaries indicated they went into debt; 43 percent found recent COLA adjustments insufficient to maintain their standard of living. ...

In Person Service Matters

    From Effects Of Suspending In-Person Services At Social Security Administration Field Offices On Disability Applications And Allowances by Monica Farid, Michael T. Anderson, Gina Freeman, and Christopher Earles, a study for the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College:

In this study, we examine the effect of the suspension of in-person services at Social Security Administration (SSA) field offices during the COVID-19 pandemic on applications ...

The paper found that:

• There were systematic differences in the characteristics of applicants by mode of application. In-person applicants were older, less likely to have completed high school, and less likely to speak English compared to phone or online applicants.
  

• The suspension caused a 6-percent decrease in the volume of applications, implying that not everyone who wanted to apply in-person was able to apply using other modes. The effect was larger for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) applications compared to Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) applications.
  

• The suspension of in-person services caused some would-be in-person applicants to apply by phone, but it did not cause an increase in the volume of online applications.
  

• We did not find evidence that the suspension disproportionately affected groups of applicants defined by educational attainment, age, or English-speaking status.
  

• Our estimates imply that in-person service suspensions explain more than 50 percent of the decline in SSI and DI applications during the pandemic. ...
  

    The first and fourth points above seem to be in tension with each other.

Listen To The Voters Part II

      From Data For Progress