The Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced plans to implement significant reductions to its workforce, describing it as a response to a “bloated workforce.”
Why It Matters
It comes after the Office of Personnel Management advised federal government agencies to submit “reorganization plans” earlier this week by March 13 and prepare for “reductions in force.” The SSA has also announced a number of changes to its operations, including the closure of field offices and internal departments.
The SSA has also been struggling with a 50-year low in staffing, combined with a higher-than-ever number of beneficiaries.
Jon Elswick/AP
What To Know
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced plans to reduce its workforce by 7,000 employees.
In a press release, the agency said it plans to reduce its current staff of around 57,000 to a target of 50,000 employees.
To achieve this, SSA will offer Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP) and expand the option for early retirement for those over 50 years of age who meet certain service requirements. These programs will be available to employees on a first-come, first-served basis. Some staff reductions will also come from position eliminations or reassignments within the agency, with agencies required to send their plans for workforce reductions to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by March 13, 2025.
The SSA will also reduce its 10 regional offices to four as part of the plan. The press release said that having 10 regional offices is “no longer sustainable,” and described the SSA’s current organizational structure as “outdated and inefficient.”
“These steps prioritize customer service by streamlining redundant layers of management, reducing non-mission critical work, and potential reassignment of employees to customer service positions,” the agency said, adding that the SSA is looking to save money in areas like technology and contractor services to ensure these changes improve how Social Security services are delivered.
It comes as the SSA is already facing a staffing shortage.
In 2022, the last year for which data is available, the SSA had 60,570 employees. Staff numbers had reduced steadily over the preceding 12 years, down from a peak of 70,758 workers in 2010.
Jeffrey A. Rabin & Associates, a Social Security specialist law firm based in Mount Prospect, Illinois, previously pointed out that a reduction in staff, along with a 25 percent increase in beneficiaries over the years, has already resulted in longer call wait times, delayed claims processing, and office closures at the SSA. The firm attributes these issues to budget cuts imposed by Congress, noting that the budget has dropped by 19 percent when adjusted for inflation.
In late 2024, before the Trump administration, a spokesperson for the SSA told Newsweek that the agency had “reached a 50-year low in staffing, even as the number of customers we serve reaches a new record high each day.”
During testimony before Congress on March 21, 2024, former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley stated that, by the end of the 2024 fiscal year, the agency would serve 7 million more beneficiaries with 7,000 fewer full-time staff than in FY 2015. O’Malley emphasized that the SSA cannot “keep doing more with less,” pointing out that budget constraints have left the agency at its lowest staffing level in 25 years.
The staffing reductions at the SSA come as President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), lead by Elon Musk, are trying to drastically reduce the size of the federal government.
So far, DOGE has recommended the firing of more than 200,000 federal workers, and about 75,000 probationary federal employees have accepted buyout plans known as “deferred resignations,” per the Office of Personnel Management.
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development has seen the most radical cuts under the Trump administration, with 780 employees fired, amounting to 83 percent of the department’s workforce, according to CNN. Meanwhile, around 2,000 employees were laid off at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), amounting to 20 percent of the department’s workforce. Numerous other departments have also seen layoffs, including Defense, Education, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others.
What People Are Saying
The SSA said in a press release: “The agency plans to reduce the size of its bloated workforce and organizational structure, with a significant focus on functions and employees who do not directly provide mission critical services. Social Security recently set a staffing target of 50,000, down from the current level of approximately 57,000 employees. Rumor of a 50 percent reduction is false.”
Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, said in a statement: “The Social Security Administration is already chronically understaffed. Now the Trump Administration wants to demolish it.”
Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at The Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.—based think tank, wrote in a piece for Bloomberg: “Reductions to Social Security operations surely will get pushback from many members of Congress, even some Republicans. But the real victims to cuts to an already short-staffed Social Security Administration inevitably will be those who rely on its benefits.”
What Happens Next
A specific date for when the reductions will start has not been decided yet, and will depend on when OPM approves the plans.