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 The organizational structure at Headquarters also is outdated and inefficient.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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Jeff R.
This is the dumbest possible approach. My experience with the ss office is that they need more staff. I’m baffled and stupified.
Hollis G.
Commissioner Dudek:
I find it hard to believe that increasing the workload of regional offices and moving Social Security staff farther from beneficiaries (which will be the result of reducing regional offices from 10 to 4 and reducing local regional staff) will increase agency efficiency.
Social Security Administration was hard hit by hiring freezes in the Reagan administration in the 1980s and has not ever proportionally increased its staffing to pre-Reagan levels. I dispute the statement that the SSA workforce is “bloated.”
For the record, I am not a Social Security employee, nor have I been. I worked for a Republican US Senator during the Reagan years and witnessed the agency choking on its workload due to staff reductions. As a congressional aide, I helped constituents with their problems with Social Security and discovered that many of those problems were due solely to staffing cutbacks.
I do not believe that this reduction in workforce will have a more positive effect than historical cutbacks have had. Please learn from history: Do not label your skilled, hardworking workforce “bloated.” Do not recklessly cut staff without careful consideration of all consequences, especially the effects on the people you aim to serve.
(Ms) Hollis Guill Ryan
Commentor
SSA has suffered for years with fewer staff than they need, resulting in long wait times for telephone and face-to-face appointments, delays in processing claims, and errors. It is unconscionable to force the American people to deal with a reduction in service in these vital, life saving programs due to the lack of leadership in the executive and legislative branches of government.
Jeanne L.
Sounds well planned. Thank you for letting the public know.
DAVID A.
I always will have a soft spot in my heart for SSA, having worked for the agency from 1970-2000. I have maintained an interest in their mission and challenges these past 25 years. It pains me that they must undergo numerous leadership changes despite the 10 year commissioner terms which have yet to be fulfilled. But the plan to consolidate regional offices and trim non-mission-related staff in both the regions and the headquarters strikes me as a wise one. I hope it succeeds without jeopardizing SSA important mission and purpose: the income security of millions of Americans.
Regina Q.
Musk rat and orange face felon are at it again….
Ann P.
Hope this will work. For a long time, there was a long wait to reach someone or a long wait to get cut off. This was recently remedied with additional staff. If enough personnel cannot be kept to solve problems, this will put us back to where we were before. Not a good situation to not be able to reach someone who can help.
Joyce H.
I am in shock as employee must be.. I feel deeply for all those in lost of their jobs. Upper management always makes it sound like they are giving employee’s a positive outcome when the fact is it is not. Thanking all employes of years of work!
Nancy
Where, exactly is the evidence base for the current SSA Federal “leadership” using the term “bloated workforce” in your recent comments on your/our* federal agency (*= the millions of tax payers funding federal programs, including the SSA)?
Please do share with your blog readers the evidence-base used; this assumes of course SSA’s current leadership’s use of established, reasoned metrics and rational thinking were applied to the decision to eliminate 7,000 humans’ jobs within the SSA. This number represented approximately 15 percent of the workforce.
I am sure that the 7,000 people who are being eliminated from the SSA would appreciate a more thoughtful and professional reference to their group than that of “bloat.” Perhaps a more respectful term such as “professionals” or “federal workers supporting the mission of the SSA and its decades of service to America” is in order?
Sam K.
A great plan to change things around and continue the accountability.
Darla J.
I don’t know when was the last time you needed to speak to someone at the SSA offices but with extremely long wait times on the phone and in person if you can even fit the already bare minum operational times we need more workers and availability NOT LESS! DON’T DRINK THE KOOLAIDE