After Layoffs, Social Security Asks Remaining Employees To Work 10% Harder

WASHINGTON — The Social Security Administration connected Wednesday asked its employees to enactment hard to wide a backlog of status claims aft the bureau pushed retired thousands of workers earlier this year.  

In an interior memo to operations employees obtained by HuffPost, a Social Security authoritative said the bureau has received much status claims than successful immoderate erstwhile year, acknowledgment successful portion to the ongoing status of babe boomers. 

The backlog has grown to 575,000 pending status claims, with much than 140,000 of those pending for much than 60 days. 

“I americium calling for a sprint – a focused, concerted effort successful each offices opening contiguous and lasting done the extremity of May – to code this increasing backlog of pending status and subsister claims successful our tract offices and Workload Support Units,” Stephen Evangelista, lawman commissioner for operations, wrote successful the email. 

“I americium calling for each offices to bash their precise champion to summation their [Retirement, Survivors, Health Insurance] clearances by astatine slightest 10 percent regular done the extremity of May,” Evangelista wrote. 

The telephone for Social Security’s much than 50,000 employees to enactment harder comes conscionable weeks aft the bureau trumpeted its efforts to shed unit arsenic portion of President Donald Trump’s ngo to marque the authorities much efficient. Social Security proudly announced connected April 29, Trump’s 100th time successful office, that it had gotten escaped of 350 employees done deferred resignations and 3,000 employees done voluntary separations. 

“As SSA reshapes its enactment to absorption connected nonstop lawsuit work to the public, each non-essential unit received the enactment of deferred resignation,” the bureau said successful a press release. 

HuffPost asked the Social Security property bureau if, successful airy of the status claims backlog and the petition for SSA employees to enactment harder, laying disconnected those employees mightiness person been a mistake. The bureau did not instantly respond.

Democrats and the national officials representing overmuch of Social Security’s workforce person pointed retired for years that the agency’s staffing is already astatine a 50-year debased comparative to the measurement of claims. 

White House advisor Elon Musk led Trump’s workforce-slashing initiative, ordering national agencies including Social Security to laic disconnected unit and inquire those who remained to warrant their beingness with play emails listing caller accomplishments. 

Musk and his agents successful the alleged Department of Government Efficiency besides pushed Social Security to institute changes to its telephone service, which the bureau announced would instrumentality effect, but past abandoned aft outcry from lawmakers. 

A show dashboard connected Social Security’s website shows pending claims astatine 597,022 arsenic of April, up from a caller debased of 346,277 successful September 2024. 

Martin O’Malley, who served arsenic commissioner of Social Security nether President Joe Biden, said immoderate of the surge successful claims could person resulted from nationalist panic implicit Musk’s interventions astatine the agency, which Democrats person labeled arsenic a menace to benefits. Still, the unit reductions, O’Malley said, were foolish. 

“They’ve gotten escaped of truthful galore radical truthful rapidly that the hold times for everything are going successful the incorrect directions,” O’Malley told HuffPost.