Social Security Staff Cuts Have Harmed Service Delivery in Every State
Since taking charge of the federal government a year and half ago, the Trump Administration has booted out more than 8,000 Social Security workers, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management of the federal government. Currently the Social Security Administration has fewer employees than at any time since 1967 (nearly 60 years ago) even though the SSA is serving 52 million more clients.
Contrary to rosy, self-serving press releases from the current SSA Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano, who says “the agency is working faster and better than ever”, an analysis of recent data from the nonpartisan research and policy institute the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). reveals that “[t]his largest-ever cut in SSA staffing has affected field offices and operations in every state. This cut has compromised SSA’s ability to reliably serve seniors, bereaved families, and people with disabilities.” For the nation as a whole the staff cuts average 14% with a 10% cut in customer service personnel. However, the cuts in Illinois have been deeper. The SSA eliminated 416 positions in our state, a 17% reduction in staffing, and 206 of those jobs were customer service positions, a loss of 13%.
As we reported in an earlier blog post according to the agency’s own performance data, there has been a significant increase in wait times for phone services since President Trump was elected. In April of last year, the average wait time was 86 minutes, a 25% increase since 2024, the last year of the Biden administration. What it is now is anybody’s guess because as of June 2025 amid bad press on its worsening performance, SSA stopped publicly releasing regular monthly updates of many customer-focused service metrics. It appears that Social Security’s response to the deterioration of customer service is to withhold key performance measures from the public. The CBPP reported that the “SSA restored the public release of some of those measures over time, but certain key metrics have remained unreported. For example, SSA no longer shares how long callers to the 800 number wait on hold or for a call to be returned, how long it takes applicants to get an appointment, or how many unfulfilled requests languish in the processing backlog. And in May 2026, SSA failed to publish any updates to its monthly performance measures.”
SSA is now routing some calls to other Social Security offices — often to another state and to staffers who don’t have jurisdiction over the caller’s case and who frequently cannot answer callers’ questions or cannot solve their problems. The effect is that while the agency’s press releases claim that call wait times have been reduced, actual customer service has deteriorated even more.
The Chicago Social Security Disability lawyers at Nash Disability Law, along with other advocates for the elderly and people with disabilities, call on the Social Security Administration to beef up hiring to avoid further degradations of service and to announce publicly and in detail its plans to improve customer service. Furthermore, the agency needs to restore transparency in reporting key customer service metrics. They owe this to the American people.
