Social Security Announces Workforce and Organization Plans
Reading Time: 2 MinutesLast Updated: February 28, 2025
Consistent with recent executive orders issued by the White House, the Social Security Administration will continue to implement efficiencies and reduce costs, with a renewed focus on mission critical work for the American people.
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.
Initial steps to reduce the workforce included offering a limited number of employees the opportunity to leave the agency under the Deferred Resignation Program and Voluntary Early Retirement (VERA).
Yesterday, the agency announced to all employees that Social Security would soon implement agency-wide organizational restructuring that will include significant workforce reductions. The announcement includes offering Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP) to all employees on a first come first serve basis and expanding VERA to all employees. Both VERA and VSIP require employees to opt in and to separate from the agency by specific dates.
Social Security anticipates that much of the staff reductions needed to reach the target of 50,000 will come from retirement, VSIP, and resignation. Additional reductions will come from reduction-in-force (RIF) actions that could include abolishment of organizations and positions. RIF also can include directed reassignments from one position to another position in the agency. Agencies are required to submit their RIF plans to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by March 13, 2025. No date has been set when a RIF might begin after OPM approves the plan.
SSA has operated with a regional structure consisting of 10 offices, which is no longer sustainable. The agency will reduce the regional structure in all agency components down to four regions. The organizational structure at Headquarters also is outdated and inefficient. SSA will now have seven Deputy Commissioner level organizations.
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. Also supporting this priority is looking for efficiencies and other opportunities to reduce costs across all spending categories, including information technology and contractor spending. SSA is committed to ensure this plan has a positive effect on the delivery of Social Security services.
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Mike H.
Such a well-needed announcement. Maybe someone will actually answer the phone if I call this time.
Joshua S.
In case you thought Social Security was slow enough, thankfully now our POTUS has decided to completely eliminate it altogether!
How kind, now we won’t have to worry about waiting forever to hear back, woohoo!
🫠
Tony
It is about time the SSA got rid of all these useless employees. The SSA hired a bunch of useless customer service representatives who can’t give disability updates more than what is available online.
These disability claimants are the ones complaining to their congressman, but they are too stupid to know that the SSA needs more medical examiners at the State DDS and more ALJs at the hearing level. Instead the SSA hired thousands more useless customer service.
The SSA covers up the backlog of initial disability determination and backlog of appeals at the ALJ hearing. Instead they bring up the 30 minutes wait time on the phone and hire thousands of customer service representatives.
Back in the days when I applied for Social Security disability, there was a useless automated SSA phone number to call to get a disability update. Now the SSA pays out hundreds of millions of dollars for the useless customer service representatives to answer the phone and provide nothing more than what the useless automated phone system use to provide.
The SSA went backwards in technology from automated to manual and costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Jack F.
Anyone who thinks SSA’s workforce is bloated clearly never worked in the field. Staffing is the lowest it’s been since the SSI hiring increases in the 70’s. DDSs processing times are horrible despite efolder improvement due to inadequate staffing. The public would be better served by adding 7000 employees instead of cutting that number from current staffing.
DM
BS
Dale
Waiting times, processing times, mistakes and fraud will go up.
Does anybody at Social Security check for fraud? I am sure that somewhere at Social Security there is a team that does that. But, after these staff reductions, that team will be smaller. Which means that after these staff reductions, MORE FRAUD WILL GO UNDETECTED.
What is described here is not a plan. A plan lists the current measurement of MANY metrics, like waiting time, total time to resolve issues, how accurate data is, and how long it takes to detect fraud. Then, a real plan provides specific steps or new approaches that will allow these metrics to be met using fewer people. These metrics should get measured before and after any changes to see if they actual improve, or at least are not worse.
This announcement totally avoids stating how important work will get done with fewer people. My guess is that a lot of telephone support will be outsourced to the lowest bidder in India, which makes we worry about the integrity of our personal and financial data.
Closing regional offices has the potential so save rental costs – but only if the current buildings are not near their full capacity. Are some of the current office buildings half empty?
Marge W.
Won’t reducing both staff and regional offices further slow SSA’s ability to respond to citizens with questions?
Fuck
I’m reporting a social security scam. Leland Dudek, this real slimy piece of shit is ripping off elderly Americans.
Ted
Personally I believe that they should start with the leadership and leave the work force alone. It’s the work force who do all the work, while those at the top are given all the credit and benefits. That’s where the bloat is.
DeeAnna L.
I hope the reduction and efficiency measures reduce the length of time an applicant hasta wait to receive benefits while experiencing homelessness and other social economical issues. I believe some of these reductions are necessary and can be executed much more efficiently with re-organization.