Struggling In Rhinelander

      From WORT in Madison, WI:

The Social Security Administration office in Rhinelander, Wisconsin has recently cut their hours in half due to a severe staffing shortage. This is happening in other locations around the country as the agency has been truncated and starved of operating funds. Labor Radio spoke with Jessica LaPointe, President of both the American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, Council 220 and Local 1346.

REPORTER: What is going on with the Social Security Administration in Rhinelander?

JESSICA LAPOINTE: Rhinelander has a field office up there that serves about 35 people a day plus another 40 people that are looking to get a temporary work visa for summer camps and ski resorts and agricultural work visas.

Basically, that field office has reduced their service hours from 9 to 4 to 9 to 12:30 due to under staffing.

REPORTER: What is full staffing there?

JESSICA LAPOINTE: About 12. They were reduced to about 7 over the years and then in the last two years they’ve been reduced to 2.

REPORTER: Why did this happen?

JESSICA LAPOINTE: The 12 to 7 (cut of employees) is a result of budget cuts and limited hiring over the last decade and a half. And then, in January 2025, the Trump administration sent the Department of Government Efficiency to incentivize workers to leave, paid workers about $25,000 to leave. That reduced staff and then that had a snowball effect on attrition where workloads became unmanageable and workers began to burn out and become very stressed.

And then our rights began to get stripped as workers, our workplace flexibilities, our ability to get time off and care for ourselves and our family. That caused more people to leave as pressures began to mount so now they’re down to 2 and now they have to reduce the service hours in the office.

REPORTER: Who does this affect?

JESSICA LAPOINTE: This affects the community of Rhinelander.  The closest field office is about an hour away in Wausau. And then it affects the businesses that now don’t have that office to go to to get their worker visas taken care of, to get replacement social security cards timely.

Now there’s one remaining front desk worker, one remaining claim specialist. They’re also at risk of burnout. …

Union Makes Reasonable Request That's Impossible Today

      From Morningstar:

... The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents a total of 820,000 federal government workers, recently called on Congress to restore about $3 billion in funding to the SSA that was lost to budget cuts, and to boost the workforce by as much as 40% from current levels. ...

The SSA's administrative budget has fallen from 1.2% of benefit outlays in 2017 to 0.86% currently, which represents an annual loss of $3 billion in operating revenue, the union said. In comparison, private insurance companies are funded at roughly 20% of their benefit outlays, meaning that the SSA is deeply underfunded, the union said. 

Meanwhile, SSA staffing has declined 14% during President Donald Trump's second term - from 57,384 in January 2025 down to 49,439 in June 2026 - a net loss of 7,945 employees, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. ...

I Wonder What The Internal Memos Say At Social Security

      From NOTUS:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called any concerns over the cuts to IRS staffing “a complete fallacy” in a testimony to Congress earlier this month.

Frank Bisignano, the IRS CEO, told lawmakers that the “pundits out there saying IRS is going to fail” as a result of sweeping staffing cuts are wrong. …

Internally, however, the agency is projecting an entirely different picture. While the Trump administration publicly stated that the IRS has suffered no ill effects from the staffing cuts, the agency was sounding the alarm that it would be unable to handle tax season, requesting special permission to hire thousands of employees on an expedited basis.

The IRS ultimately requested, and received, special authority to hire 8,000 employees on an expedited basis, according to an internal memorandum obtained by NOTUS.

The agency has “seen massive cuts to its staff in 2025 through workforce reduction initiatives” and “ongoing staffing shortages put the 2026 Filing Season at risk,” Alex Kweskin, the agency’s top human-resources official, said in the late-February memo to the Treasury Department that was later passed on to the Office of Personnel Management. …

SSA Staff To Continue To Shrink

      From Federal News Network:

… In a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine), Bisignano wrote that SSA is looking to fill 1,000 positions — a mix of telephone service representatives and field office workers. But that level of hiring won’t keep up with the agency’s rate of attrition.

According to [a union official], SSA expects attrition to shrink its headcount by 2,000 employees this year. Bisignano wrote in his letter to Collins that workforce attrition this year will be 50% lower than last year, and 30% lower than in 2024, “providing consistency for both staff and the public we serve.” …

Staffing Cuts

     From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

Trump Administration Cuts to Social Security Staffing, January 2025 to April 2026
	Overall SSA Staffing Losses		Loss of Select Customer Service Positions1
	#	%	#	%
ALABAMA	-313	-12%	-195	-12%
ALASKA	-3	-8%	-1	-4%
ARIZONA	-82	-13%	-58	-12%
ARKANSAS	-44	-11%	-31	-9%
CALIFORNIA	-637	-11%	-348	-8%
COLORADO	-106	-17%	-52	-13%
CONNECTICUT	-30	-10%	-21	-9%
DELAWARE	-5	-5%	-6	-9%
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA	-198	-21%	-23	-22%
FLORIDA	-344	-13%	-252	-12%
GEORGIA	-220	-14%	-97	-9%
HAWAII	-28	-21%	-20	-18%
IDAHO	-8	-6%	-3	-3%
ILLINOIS	-416	-17%	-206	-13%
INDIANA	-86	-13%	-60	-12%
IOWA	-32	-13%	-24	-12%
KANSAS	-31	-13%	-22	-12%
KENTUCKY	-97	-14%	-66	-12%
LOUISIANA	-62	-11%	-43	-10%
MAINE	-20	-12%	-16	-12%
MARYLAND2	-1,543	-16%	124	5%
MASSACHUSETTS	-120	-12%	-89	-12%
MICHIGAN	-136	-11%	-92	-11%
MINNESOTA	-50	-13%	-42	-13%
MISSISSIPPI	-57	-11%	-35	-9%
MISSOURI	-405	-17%	-224	-16%
MONTANA	-18	-17%	-15	-18%
NEBRASKA	-20	-13%	-13	-12%
NEVADA	-36	-14%	-17	-8%
NEW HAMPSHIRE	-12	-9%	-11	-12%
NEW JERSEY	-23	-3%	-24	-4%
NEW MEXICO	-160	-23%	-145	-23%
NEW YORK	-452	-13%	-223	-9%
NORTH CAROLINA	-186	-14%	-106	-12%
NORTH DAKOTA	-7	-9%	-2	-4%
OHIO	-165	-13%	-127	-13%
OKLAHOMA	-52	-11%	-31	-9%
OREGON	-54	-16%	-38	-15%
PENNSYLVANIA	-587	-16%	-357	-14%
RHODE ISLAND	-9	-6%	-5	-5%
SOUTH CAROLINA	-64	-11%	-46	-11%
SOUTH DAKOTA	-5	-7%	-4	-6%
TENNESSEE	-124	-14%	-74	-11%
TEXAS	-424	-13%	-279	-11%
UTAH	-22	-13%	-16	-12%
VERMONT	-7	-13%	-6	-12%
VIRGINIA	-100	-14%	-75	-14%
WASHINGTON	-168	-15%	-128	-15%
WEST VIRGINIA	-49	-16%	-23	-11%
WISCONSIN	-91	-17%	-80	-18%
WYOMING	-6	-18%	-6	-19%
TOTAL3	-8,028	-14%	-3,809	-10%
Source: OPM EHRI Status