{"id":152295,"date":"2025-08-17T04:56:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T04:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/152295\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T04:56:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T04:56:16","slug":"social-security-field-offices-report-widespread-staffing-losses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/152295\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Security field offices report widespread staffing losses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social Security Administration field offices across the country may have lost 20 percent of their staff since March 2024, according to estimates by Axios<\/a> and the Strategic Organizing Center<\/a>, a coalition of labor unions.<\/p>\n

The unions estimated that field offices \u2014 where Americans can apply for benefits and deal with the agency face-to-face \u2014 had altogether lost about 5 percent of their staff by March. Hawaii (11 percent), Montana (14 percent), and New Mexico (10 percent) were among the states most impacted.<\/p>\n

Tack onto that the nearly 2,000 field workers who took the Trump administration\u2019s voluntary buyout<\/a>, along with the reassignment of about 1,000 local call center representatives to staff the agency\u2019s overwhelmed national hotline. Axios estimated the total reductions account for about 20 percent of the Social Security workforce from March 2024.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the agency disputed that calculation, saying headcount in field offices had been reduced about 6 percent compared to March 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis change in staffing has not had an impact on the ability of SSA to serve the American people due to enhanced process engineering, technology improvements, and world-class management,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The Department of Government Efficiency has also looked<\/a> to let lapse the leases of at least 26 field offices this year.<\/p>\n

The Social Security Administration said<\/a> in a July press release that it slashed average wait times at field offices to 23 minutes, down from 30 minutes last year. It also said it dramatically reduced the average waiting time for a phone call to just six minutes this week, down from an 18-minute average for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n

The trust fund that supplies Social Security has also been accelerating towards insolvency, with latest estimates saying<\/a> the agency may no longer be able to fulfill all claims as soon as late 2032.<\/p>\n

Updated: 5:11 p.m.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social Security Administration field offices across the country may have lost 20 percent of their staff since March…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":152296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[89264,64,89262,255,711,3566,89263,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-152295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-axios","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-field-offices","11":"tag-personal-finance","12":"tag-social-security","13":"tag-social-security-administration","14":"tag-strategic-organizing-center","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115042332468696898","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}