SSA Cuts 7,000 Jobs and Centralizes Operations as Disability Claims Processing Time Drops 40%

The Social Security Administration shed more than 7,000 of its 57,000 employees in 2025, including some 3,000 workers who provide direct customer service. Overall staffing hit its lowest point since the late 1960s, when the agency served approximately 50 million fewer beneficiaries than its current 75 million Americans.

An employee-satisfaction index gave the SSA a score of 54 out of 100 in 2024 before dropping to 15 out of 100 in 2025.

In early 2025, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk accused the SSA of widespread fraud. Elon Musk claimed without evidence that millions of centenarian “vampires” were collecting Social Security checks. President Donald Trump listed dozens of SSA offices for closure and appointed Leland Dudek as acting commissioner.

Leland Dudek boasted that he had “circumvented the chain of command” to help DOGE access confidential SSA data. The Senate confirmed Frank Bisignano to lead the SSA in May 2025. He was later appointed to run the Internal Revenue Service while continuing to lead the SSA.

An SSA spokesman said Frank Bisignano serves both the SSA and IRS 100 percent of the time. ” Frank Bisignano’s reforms centralized operations and shrank the role of field offices. Jean, a manager of a Social Security field office in the Midwest for more than a decade, saw her region combined with much of the West, stretching from Ohio to Alaska.

The head count at the consolidated regional headquarters went from around 500 to 16. Bisignano set a goal of reducing in-person SSA visits by 50 percent in 2026, from nearly 32 million to 15 million. ’” The SSA operated a national 1-800 number in addition to direct lines at each of its 1,200 field offices open five days a week.

U.S. Postal Service, the SSA is the only federal agency with such a direct brick-and-mortar connection to the American public. Supplemental Security Income goes to about 7 million poor and disabled individuals.

Mary, a Colorado resident who receives SSI and disability due to blindness, used to call or visit her field office but is now rerouted to the national line and walk-ins are not allowed. Wait times on the SSA 1-800 number soared in 2025 due to downsizing. Frank Bisignano promised to bring 1-800 wait times down to under ten minutes.

T. to answer national calls. A payment-processing worker received only three hours of training instead of the usual three months before answering national calls.

Frank Bisignano claimed automation enabled 30 percent of field-office calls to be handled through self-service options and cited 90 percent for the 1-800 number. Reported 1-800 wait times fell to under seven minutes as of April 2026. A 2025 SSA inspector general report noted the agency counts callback requests as zero wait time.

The number of pending initial claims for disability benefits dropped by 30 percent from 2024 to 2025. Average processing time for disability claims was cut by 40 percent from 2024 to 2025. Seven percent fewer people applied for disability benefits in the period after 2024 and the disability benefit grant rate fell by 3 percent, according to disability-rights organizations.

An earlier study published in the American Economic Journal found that field-office closures led to a 16-percent decline in disability recipients in surrounding areas. Late last year, the SSA announced two new national systems that automatically assign any field-office worker a phone appointment or case regardless of location.

The employees’ union interpreted the new national assignment systems as an assault on local and subject-matter expertise.

The new national scheduling and workflow systems announced by Bisignano in December 2025 were slated to take effect in early spring 2026. In January 2026, Sari Plumb, an 18-year SSA claims specialist in Duluth, Minnesota, mailed SSI redetermination forms and handled calls on retirement, disability, and SSI. The federal government shut down for a record 43 days in September 2025.

Frank Bisignano sent a partisan email to all SSA staff blaming “Congressional Democrats” for the 43-day government shutdown. At Christmastime 2025, Frank Bisignano sent every field office a gift basket of chocolate-covered pretzels made by his daughter’s company Pretzables. As soon as Trump returned to office, the SSA agreed to share addresses of nearly 100,000 people with ICE.

The SSA categorized thousands of immigrants as deceased to encourage self-deportation and halted the automatic issuance of Social Security cards to noncitizens with work permits. A legal memo uncovered by Popular Information stated that the SSA reversal on issuing cards to noncitizens likely violated the Social Security Act.

According to the SSA spokesman, the agency partnered with DHS to update records of 275,000 individuals no longer holding legal status.

In January 2026 a Native American woman who is a member of a Minnesota tribe visited the Duluth SSA office to request replacement Social Security cards for herself and her children because she feared for their safety amid immigration enforcement.