Noteboom The Law Firm

Need to apply for Social Security's services? Be prepared to wait, wait, and wait some more...

If you've visited any one of the Social Security Administration's (SSA) field offices lately, you will have surely felt the effects of their understaffing. According to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), staffing in Social Security field offices dropped 4.4 percent from 2005 to 2008.

With the influx in "baby boomer" retirees and people signing up for retirement and disability benefits, more than 3 million customers who went to a field office to start an application, apply for a Social Security card, or enroll in direct deposit waited over an hour to be served in 2008, including approximately 405,000 people who waited more than 2 hours for service. 

In an effort to stay afloat, the staff set aside some lower priority work, but still took in some water when office work produced fell by 1.3 percent during the same period and customer satisfaction dropped from 84 percent to 81 percent. Many customers also reported poor office phone service. SSA’s Field Office Caller Survey found that 51 percent of customers calling selected field offices had at least one earlier call that had gone unanswered. That number could be even higher because only customers who eventually got through to the field office were included in the survey.

Field office managers and staff told GAO that they cannot keep up with their work. When an office is under stress, some types of work are deferred including changes of address, updates to direct deposit information, and conducting reviews of beneficiaries’ continuing eligibility. Delaying these reviews means that beneficiaries who no longer qualify for benefits may still erroneously receive payments.

And yet, the SSA workload is expected to increase tremendously. Late last year we blogged about the SSA's estimates of retirement and disability filings. The agency projects that filings will increase its work by approximately 1 million annual claims by 2017. The agency also estimates that 44 percent of its staff will retire by 2016.

So where does that leave us?? Well, without a complete overhaul of its system, there's not much the SSA can do to make things better. However, we can keep our fingers (and toes) crossed - SSA published a strategic plan in September 2008, which calls for the elimination of the backlog of disability hearings and efforts to increase online retirement filings.