Social security chief: staff woes imperil local offices

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.