WASHINGTON — The Social Security Administration on Wednesday asked its employees to work hard to clear a backlog of retirement claims after the agency pushed out thousands of workers earlier this year.
In an internal memo to operations employees obtained by HuffPost, a Social Security official said the agency has received more retirement claims than in any previous year, thanks in part to the ongoing retirement of baby boomers.
The backlog has grown to 575,000 pending retirement claims, with more than 140,000 of those pending for more than 60 days.
“I am calling for a sprint – a focused, concerted effort in all offices beginning today and lasting through the end of May – to address this growing backlog of pending retirement and survivor claims in our field offices and Workload Support Units,” Stephen Evangelista, deputy commissioner for operations, wrote in the email.
“I am calling for all offices to do their very best to increase their [Retirement, Survivors, Health Insurance] clearances by at least 10 percent daily through the end of May,” Evangelista wrote.
The call for Social Security’s more than 50,000 employees to work harder comes just weeks after the agency trumpeted its efforts to shed staff as part of President Donald Trump’s mission to make the government more efficient. Social Security proudly announced on April 29, Trump’s 100th day in office, that it had gotten rid of 350 employees through deferred resignations and 3,000 employees through voluntary separations.
“As SSA reshapes its organization to focus on direct customer service to the public, all non-essential staff received the option of deferred resignation,” the agency said in a press release.
HuffPost asked the Social Security press office if, in light of the retirement claims backlog and the request for SSA employees to work harder, laying off those employees might have been a mistake. The agency did not immediately respond.
Democrats and the union officials representing much of Social Security’s workforce have pointed out for years that the agency’s staffing is already at a 50-year low relative to the volume of claims.
White House adviser Elon Musk led Trump’s workforce-slashing initiative, ordering federal agencies including Social Security to lay off staff and ask those who remained to justify their existence with weekly emails listing recent accomplishments.
Musk and his agents in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency also pushed Social Security to institute changes to its phone service, which the agency announced would take effect, but then abandoned after outcry from lawmakers.
A performance dashboard on Social Security’s website shows pending claims at 597,022 as of April, up from a recent low of 346,277 in September 2024.
Martin O’Malley, who served as commissioner of Social Security under President Joe Biden, said some of the surge in claims could have resulted from public panic over Musk’s interventions at the agency, which Democrats have labeled as a threat to benefits. Still, the staff reductions, O’Malley said, were foolish.
“They’ve gotten rid of so many people so quickly that the wait times for everything are going in the wrong directions,” O’Malley told HuffPost.