The Social Security Administration continues to struggle with the loss of nearly 8,000 employees more than a year after sweeping workforce reductions tied to the Department of Government Efficiency, even as agency leaders tout improvements in customer service and technology.
The agency, which distributes retirement, survivor, and disability benefits to about 75 million Americans each month, has lost roughly 14% of its workforce since the DOGE-led cost-cutting effort targeted it, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Current and former employees say those departures continue to strain operations despite ongoing hiring and modernization efforts.
Commissioner Frank Bisignano, who took over after the reductions, has launched a broad effort to modernize the agency, including expanding automation and shifting more services online.
He has said technology improvements will eventually save the equivalent of 2,500 full-time work hours, and the agency has opened hiring for about 1,000 positions.
Still, employees and union officials say the departure of about 7,800 workers has left many offices stretched thin.
"The look on everybody's face is they're beat down, they are demoralized, they're tired," Chris Delaney, a claims specialist and local union president representing Social Security workers in Hudson, New York, said.
According to the American Federation of Government Employees Council 220, which represents field office employees, most of the agency's roughly 1,200 field offices lost at least 10% of their staff during the reductions.
To help address staffing shortages, the agency has reassigned thousands of employees to answer calls on its national 800-number. Internal agency data show that as of July 6, about 1,500 field office workers were assigned to phone duty, while roughly 2,500 employees had been redeployed agencywide.
The changes, combined with upgrades to the agency's telephone system, have reduced average wait times. The average speed of answering calls fell to five minutes in May from 11 minutes a year earlier, according to agency figures. Beneficiaries who choose a callback are counted as having no wait time, however, and the agency no longer publicly reports average callback times.
"I'd like to make this more complicated, but it's not. It's putting people where the work is," Bisignano told lawmakers during a congressional hearing last month. "It's building technology in a modern-day fashion."
Employees say the improvement in phone service has come at a cost.
Internal data show that 64.6% of appointments for initial claims were scheduled within 30 days as of July 6, down from 78.1% a year earlier. Some regions recently fell below 45%.
Union officials say assigning field office employees to the phone lines reduces the time available for in-person appointments and claims processing.
"It's extremely disruptive to the workloads," Jeremy Maske, a union president representing frontline employees in Iowa and Nebraska, said. "If you're assigned to the 800 number once a week, that's taking a fifth of your time to answer those phones."
Bisignano has pointed to other signs of progress, including shorter waits for customers with appointments, reduced processing backlogs and faster handling of disability claims.
Agency officials also are testing a system that would centralize appointment scheduling nationwide instead of through local offices. The administration also has expanded online services, including replacement Social Security cards, and pledged not to close field offices while allowing beneficiaries to continue accessing services in person, by phone, or online.
Advocates for seniors, disabled Americans and low-income beneficiaries caution that automation and staffing reductions could disproportionately affect people with more complex cases.
"You can't lose that many people in that haphazard of a manner without an impact on services," Devin O'Connor, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said. "The question is where or when the harm will be felt."