By the end of Fiscal Year 2022, the staffing at the SSA had hit a “25-year low.” Among its vital work, the agency distributes benefits to over 73 million people, and further cuts to its staffing numbers would result in longer wait times for beneficiaries, worse customer service, and ultimately, fewer people receiving benefits. In their FY 2024 Performance Report, the agency listed managing “human capital” as one of their most important challenges. Even though SSA staffing had already started decreasing under Biden, Trump’s cost-cutting administration has moved to slash its staff even more than it has already been reduced.
Here is why the SSA needs more staff:
- Operating Field Offices To Enroll New Beneficiaries: Chronic understaffing often hits field offices hard, sometimes even forcing closures. These closures impede beneficiaries’ access to a worker who they can talk to in person about potential issues with their benefits. In turn, the lack of field offices has been linked to a decline in people filing for their social security. A recent study found that Reagan administration cuts in SSA field office staffing led to 47,285 fewer people enrolling in Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance than otherwise would have, and 31,743 fewer people enrolling in Supplemental Security Income who otherwise would have.
- Issuing Disability Benefits: Typically, Social Security Disability Insurance claims are filed at field offices, then sent to state disability determination services (DDS) for further determinations. These DDSs are fully funded by the federal government, and in their FY 2024 Performance Report, the SSA claimed one of their “biggest human capital challenges is state DDS staffing.” DDSs have a particular problem with understaffing of disability examiners. Examiners are responsible for managing the process through which applicants are approved for disability. There is a growing backlog of unaddressed claims for disability benefits: “Without enough staff to address claim backlogs, wait times to receive benefits increase, which can place people with disabilities at risk of serious negative health and financial outcomes. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, wait times have increased by 100 percent, now taking more than six months on average for an initial decision to be made.”
- Issuing Payments Properly: Due to serious understaffing, the SSA issued improper payments to over 2 million people in FY 2022 and FY 2023. The SSA commissioner at the time cited insufficient staff as an explicit reason for the error. Though these improper payments are typically not the fault of beneficiaries, the SSA is required to recoup them, which has in the past led to the agency levying massive fines on poor people with disabilities. While Elon Musk has used false claims of fraud to justify cuts to the SSA—and improperly equated improper payments with fraud—staffing the agency properly is likely to reduce improper payments, while cutting staff will increase them.