Showing posts with label Statistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Statistics. Show all posts

Aug 25, 2025

Better And Better!

     From Yahoo!Finance:

The Social Security Administration has reported significant improvements in how it serves the public. According to its latest performance metrics Americans have collectively saved an estimated 43 million hours over the past year due to faster service and expanded access across online, phone, and in-person channels. …

Aug 9, 2025

OHO Caseload Report

 

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Aug 4, 2025

BLS And SSA

 


    You’ve probably heard that the President has fired the Director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after receiving a disappointing report from BLS on job growth in the U.S. He claimed that the Director had “rigged” the report to hurt him. There is now clear reason to fear that future job growth reports will be manipulated or outright falsified to please the President. Job growth is certainly important to Social Security. The more jobs, the more FICA money coming in to the Trust Funds. However, statistical reports on job growth themselves aren’t important to recipients of Social Security benefits. However, other statistics generated by BLS are — the cost of living numbers. The President has claimed that the Trump tariffs won’t increase inflation. Will BLS now be willing to issue reports showing a significant increase in the cost of living? The President would probably be more upset at significant increases in the cost of living than with disappointing job growth numbers. Will he insist that the books be cooked to show low inflation even if that’s not what’s happening? If he does, Social Security’s Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) will cheat Social Security recipients. That wouldn’t be popular.  So, what’s happened at BLS is pretty important to Social Security. Keep an eye on it.

Jul 3, 2025

Can We Trust Social Security’s Numbers?

From USA Today:

… Over the last several weeks, the agency has stopped making public 34 real-time performance metrics about things like how long they will have to wait to reach a live person on the phone, and how long applications for new senior benefits or social security benefits take to be approved. The metrics have been used for years to show how time-consuming it can be to reach a live person at certain locations or through the national 1-800 number, and as an accountability measure for the agency.

Instead the webpage now emphasizes how quickly problems can be resolved online, and says the "average speed of answer," which excludes callback wait time, is 19.2 minutes.

USA TODAY reporters called Social Security's 1-800 line multiple times over several days and found the wait times to be consistently over an hour. Multiple times they did not reach a live person before the line disconnected with no warning. …

Concerned that the information now available on the website didn't match what her staff was hearing from constituents, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's staff began conducting its own test of the 1-800 number, making hourly phone calls from June 12 through June 20. 

In a letter Warren sent to Bisignano late on June 25, she called the results of her office survey "deeply troubling." Compared to the number available online, wait times averaged nearly an hour and 45 minutes and often exceeded three hours.

Data from the office survey showed that in 50 calls, more than 50% were never answered by a human. The majority ended when the caller was placed on hold and then the call dropped.

Of calls that were answered, 32% had wait times exceeding two hours. The average wait time was 102 minutes. …

  Jen Burdick, supervising attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, said they haven't seen a reduction in call times.

"Social Security attorneys and paralegals from our office call SSA dozens of times every day. We are uniformly finding that we can't get placed into the queue, either because of system outages, phone disconnects, or AI chatbot issues.  When we do get put into the queue, wait times seem to be up from last year ‒ sometimes more than an hour.  …

     I’m fully expecting no further Congressional hearings on Social Security in this Congress but Commissioner Bisignano could still be subpoenaed to testify about this issue before a Social Security Subcommittee controlled by Democrats in 2027 even if he’s no longer Commissioner. 

Jun 12, 2025

May 11, 2025

ALJs Available Dropping Rapidly

 

From Social Security. Click on image to view full size

Apr 17, 2025

Mar 13, 2025

OHO Caseload Analysis Report

     From Social Security. Note they still refer to it as ODAR. How many years has it been since that name was changed? Has the overtime now ended at OHO?:

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Feb 17, 2025

Note The Amount Of Overtime

 

From Social Security. Click on image to view full size

Feb 14, 2025

They Call This The Waterfall Chart

 

From Social Security. Click on image to view full size
    Things are definitely not going well for Social Security in federal court.

Jan 9, 2025

Dwindling Number Of ALJs

     Notice that unless more Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) are hired we will be below 1,000 ALJs in a few months. At one point, there were almost 2,000 ALJs at Social Security.

From Social Security. Click on image to view full size.


Dec 15, 2024

OHO Caseload Analysis Report

 

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Dec 1, 2024

Nov 27, 2024

Why It Takes Longer To Get A Disability Determination

     From a recently released report. Click on image to view full size. The full report breaks it down by state and region.

Nov 18, 2024

It Keeps Getting Worse

     From a recently released report:

From Social Security's Freedom of Information website


Nov 9, 2024

OHO Caseload Analysis Report

 

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Oct 17, 2024

Report On OHO Operations

     A statistical report from Social Security on performance at its Office of Hearings Operations:

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Sep 11, 2024

OHO Caseload Analysis Report

     A statistical report from Social Security on performance at its Office of Hearings Operations:

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Aug 22, 2024

Hearing Office Wait Time

    From the Commissioner:

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    By the way, what happened to Alaska?