Social Security Chief Warns Local Offices Could Buckle Amid Staff Woes

Some SSA field offices ‘teetering on the brink,’ O’Malley says in AARP exclusive interview

Andy Markowitz,

AARP

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Published June 03, 2024

Video: Social Security Commissioner Explains Why Some Offices May Be in Danger of Closing

The recent temporary closure of a Cleveland-area Social Security office due to a shrinking staff could be a sign of things to come for the agency’s local services without additional funding to ramp up hiring, Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Martin O’Malley told AARP.

“It is not the only office that is teetering on the brink of having too few staff to stay open and to serve the public,” O’Malley said May 31 in an exclusive interview at the SSA’s headquarters just outside Baltimore. “That's a concern of ours every single day.”

O’Malley said the agency has taken steps in recent months to address a customer service crisis marked by long hold times for callers to the SSA’s toll-free hotline (800-772-1213) and record delays in decisions on disability benefit claims.

He said long-term success, including keeping the agency’s more than 1,200 local offices functioning, hinges on reversing a steep decline in staff driven by tight budgets and rising workloads.

Social Security’s workforce has shrunk from nearly 67,000 employees in 2010 to about 56,000 now, a 27-year low, according to SSA data. Over that period, the agency’s spending on labor and other operating costs — which, unlike the amount paid out in benefits, is set annually by Congress — has declined by 19 percent, accounting for inflation, while the number of beneficiaries it serves has grown by 25 percent, according to an April 2024 analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“If Congress doesn’t reverse this nonsensical reduction of staffing at Social Security, we’re probably going to see other field offices implode,” O’Malley said.

‘Domino effect’

The Cleveland Southeast Social Security office in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, shut its doors to walk-in visitors in early April, posting a notice that due to staff departures, it could only offer service by appointment until May 8 and would then close outright for at least 90 days, according to news reports.

O’Malley said the move was triggered by the departure of five employees in one day.

“They got higher paying jobs with the promise of less on-site work at another federal agency, and we no longer had the staff that we needed to keep that office open,” he said. “It took us two weeks and some volunteers to step up to agree to reassignments, but we got that field office back up, and it’s running again.”

That kind of triage has become commonplace at SSA offices across Ohio, going back to before the pandemic, said Michael Murphy, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3448, which represents Social Security employees in the state.

Martin O'Malley speaking and gesturing with his hands

Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley at the agency's headquarters in Woodlawn, Maryland, on May 31, 2024.

Stephen Voss

Murphy described a “domino effect” in which short-staffed smaller offices stay afloat with volunteer help or by offloading work to larger offices like the one where he works, in Youngstown.

“Now the large offices are feeling it,” he said. “It’s the canary in the coal mine. It’s a signal things are going to start falling apart if you have an office closing because staffing isn’t there.”

‘Blinking red’

The SSA spent several months in a hiring freeze as lawmakers debated a federal budget for fiscal year 2024, which began Oct. 1. O’Malley said the freeze was lifted when Congress finally passed a budget in late March and the agency will use that funding to add about 1,200 people.

“The primary areas where we’re going to deploy those new hires will be to the teleservice centers, to answer the 1-800 number in a more timely fashion, and to the field offices, who are all suffering from the stress of attrition and staff reductions, so that they can take the appointments and see our customers,” he said.

President Joe Biden requested $15.4 billion in SSA administrative funding for 2025, an 8.5 percent increase from current spending. “That would allow us to hire another 6,000 customer-service representatives, people in the field offices,” O’Malley said. “It would be a huge step in the right direction.”

He said SecurityStat, a data-driven management system launched at the agency this year, is helping SSA leaders more quickly identify and address local service breakdowns.

“Now that we can see where the stressors are, we’re doing everything we can to try to anticipate those things. But nobody told us in advance, those five people [in Cleveland] didn’t tell us in advance that they were all leaving on the same Tuesday,” O’Malley said.

“That's the reality when we’re dealing with such small margins across 1,211 field offices,” he added. “I mean, I could show you a map. I could show you that Cleveland was blinking red in terms of the wait times for various lines of service, but I could also show you about 100 other offices that are also blinking red right now.”

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Andy Markowitz is an AARP senior writer and editor covering Social Security and retirement. He is a former editor of the Prague Post and Baltimore City Paper.