Field Office Managers Stressed

     The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has released its March 2012 newsletter. Hiring is mostly frozen at Social Security. Inevitably, this causes problems since attrition is uneven. Some field offices have no employees leaving but some small offices have several employees leaving. The newsletter has an article on this problem. Some badly affected offices receive help from other components of the agency but others receive no help and struggle. One particularly interesting point is that new telephone systems in field offices allow managers to see just how bad phone service has been in their offices and to allot additional resources. This has improved field office telephone service but at a cost to other workloads. Field office managers also complain that they are forced into more production work such as answering the telephone and working at the reception window. This leaves them inadequate time for management duties and forces them into overtime to try to keep up.

A Snapshot

Monthly Statistical Snapshot, February 2012

(released March 2012)

• Table 1. Number of people receiving Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, or both, February 2012
• Table 2. Social Security benefits, February 2012
• Table 3. Supplemental Security Income recipients, February 2012

For more detailed monthly OASDI information, visit the Actuary's website for Beneficiary Data. For more detailed monthly SSI information, see SSI Monthly Statistics.

Table 1. Number of people receiving Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, or both, February 2012 (in thousands)

Type of beneficiary	Total	Social Security only	SSI only	Both Social Security and SSI
All beneficiaries	61,138	52,975	5,387	2,777
Aged 65 or older	39,507	37,444	899	1,165
Disabled, under age 65 a	13,822	7,722	4,488	1,612
Other b	7,809	7,809	. . .	. . .
SOURCE: Social Security Administration, Master Beneficiary Record, 100 percent data. Social Security Administration, Supplemental Security Record, 100 percent data.
NOTES: Data are for the end of the specified month. Only Social Security beneficiaries in current-payment status are included.
. . . = not applicable.
a. Includes children receiving SSI on the basis of their own disability.
b. Social Security beneficiaries who are neither aged nor disabled (for example, early retirees, young survivors).
CONTACT: (410) 965-0090 or statistics@ssa.gov.

Table 2. Social Security benefits, February 2012

Type of beneficiary	Beneficiaries		Total monthly benefits (millions of dollars)	Average monthly benefit (dollars)
	Number (thousands)	Percent
All beneficiaries	55,752	100.0	62,707	1,124.80
Old-Age Insurance
Retired workers	35,876	64.3	44,165	1,231.10
Spouses	2,291	4.1	1,393	608.30
Children	605	1.1	366	604.60
Survivors Insurance
Widow(er)s and parents a	4,216	7.6	4,881	1,157.70
Widowed mothers and fathers b	148	0.3	129	873.60
Children	1,926	3.5	1,512	785.10
Disability Insurance
Disabled workers	8,630	15.5	9,584	1,110.70
Spouses	163	0.3	49	298.60
Children	1,897	3.4	627	330.70
SOURCE: Social Security Administration, Master Beneficiary Record, 100 percent data.
NOTES: Data are for the end of the specified month. Only beneficiaries in current-payment status are included.
Some Social Security beneficiaries are entitled to more than one type of benefit. In most cases, they are dually entitled to a worker benefit and a higher spouse or widow(er) benefit. If both benefits are financed from the same trust fund, the beneficiary is usually counted only once in the statistics, as a retired-worker or a disabled-worker beneficiary, and the benefit amount recorded is the larger amount associated with the auxiliary benefit. If the benefits are paid from different trust funds the beneficiary is counted twice, and the respective benefit amounts are recorded for each type of benefit.
a. Includes nondisabled widow(er)s aged 60 or older, disabled widow(er)s aged 50 or older, and dependent parents of deceased workers aged 62 or older.
b. A widow(er) or surviving divorced parent caring for the entitled child of a deceased worker who is under age 16 or is disabled.
CONTACT: (410) 965-0090 or statistics@ssa.gov.

Table 3. Supplemental Security Income recipients, February 2012

Age	Recipients		Total payments a (millions of dollars)	Average monthly payment b (dollars)
	Number (thousands)	Percent
All recipients	8,164	100.0	4,493	515.60
Under 18	1,294	15.8	829	613.60
18–64	4,806	58.9	2,806	532.50
65 or older	2,064	25.3	858	414.60
SOURCE: Social Security Administration, Supplemental Security Record, 100 percent data.
NOTE: Data are for the end of the specified month.
a. Includes retroactive payments.
b. Excludes retroactive payments.
CONTACT: (410) 965-0090 or statistics@ssa.gov.

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Trying Way Too Hard

From an e-mail I received this morning:

Social Security’s Ticket to Work Program Hosting First Disability Employment Twitter Chat on March 30th

Topic: “Career Help for People with Developmental Disabilities”

When: Friday, March 30, 2012, 1:30 p.m., EST

Where and How: Follow @chooseworkssa and the hashtag #DEChat on Twitter

Musings On Exchanging A Propane Tank

     I need to exchange the propane tank for my gas grill this afternoon. (What an exciting lead sentence!) This puts me in mind of the last time I did this. I stopped by a convenience store near my house. When I went in there was a fellow in line ahead of me whom I recognized. He is the retired chief justice of North Carolina. He had a distinguished legal career before becoming Chief Justice. He had an outstanding tenure as Chief Justice. He has an unblemished reputation for rectitude. What was he doing in the convenience store? He was buying lottery tickets.

     My point is that we should be reasonable in our expectations about any group of people who bear the title "judge", including Social Security's Administrative Law Judges. People with the title of "judge" almost always try to live up to their title but they are made of the same stuff as the rest of us.

Now You Too Can Write In Academese

     I have written in the past about academese, the opaque writing style of academia. Now, you too can write like an academic. A new website automates it.

Is The Actuarial Reduction Still Fair?

     Full retirement age for Social Security benefits is currently 66. This will soon start rising to 67. Most people go on Social Security retirement benefits before their full retirement age, a key fact that is usually lost when politicians talk of raising the retirement age. Those who go on retirement benefits before their full retirement age receive reduced benefits. This is called the actuarial reduction. This actuarial reduction was 20% when the full retirement age was 65 and is going up to 25% when the full retirement age reaches 67. Alicia Munnell and Steven Sass at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College ask whether the actuarial reduction, which was first enacted more than 50 years ago, remains appropriate. Their conclusion is that it remains pretty close to actuarial equivalence. Their study is flawed, however, by the fact that they pretended that full retirement age was still 65. I don't understand why they did that. They certainly know what the current full retirement age is and doing the projections for full retirement age being 67 should not have been that difficult.

2011 Workload Data

From Social Security via the NOSSCR newsletter.

PEBES Suspension Criticized

     Michael Hiltzik writes in his column in the Los Angeles Times about Social Security's suspension of sending out Personal Earnings And Benefit Estimate Statements (PEBES). He thinks the suspension is a terrible idea.