Why Are Social Security Wait Times So Bad—and Hidden?

If you’ve experienced long delays when calling or visiting Social Security or waited months (or years) for a Social Security Disability benefits decision, you’re not alone—and it’s not just bad luck.

For years, Democrats have proposed more funding to improve Social Security customer service, but Republicans in Congress have repeatedly blocked or cut those increases, citing broader budget concerns.

That underfunding has led to closed offices, overworked staff, and ballooning backlogs. Making matters worse, during the Trump administration, officials stopped publicly releasing key data that tracked how long people were waiting for service. The result: declining service and less transparency about just how bad the problem has become.

In 2024, the last year of the Biden administration, the average wait time for callers was 60 minutes.

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 this year, the average wait time was 86 minutes, an increase of over 25%.

It appears that Social Security’s response to this further deterioration of customer service is to withhold key performance measures from the public.

As of June 2025, the agency has stopped reporting their 800-number call wait times, benefit processing times, and many other performance metrics.

The agency removed a menu of live phone and claims data from its website and replaced it with a new page which offers a far more limited view of the agency’s customer service performance.

Among the now-missing performance metrics is a section with current call wait time, call back wait time, number of callers waiting on hold, and the number of callers waiting on a call back.

Also gone are pages with information about processing times for retirement, disability, survivor and Medicare benefits. There is no reference to disability benefits on the new page, so there is no published data on how long it takes the SSA to reconsider disability decisions and process disability benefits appeals.

These changes come despite a March SSA press release which said, in part, “The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced today several new initiatives and resources to promote greater transparency and accountability. President Trump has been clear that good government must serve the People. This begins with being transparent in how its government makes decisions and operates as good stewards of the resources entrusted to it.”

The press release attributed the remarks to Lee Dudek, then Acting Commissioner of Social Security, (Frank Bisignano was sworn in on May 7 of this year as the current SSA Commissioner.)

Social Security’s efforts to improve customer service have been further hobbled by staff cuts imposed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), previously led by Elon Musk.

DOGE has dictated that the SSA must cut its work force of 57,000 employees by 7,000. Thousands who elected to take early buyouts have already left. Even though the number of Americans who rely on modest old age and disability benefits has grown­—from about 26 million in 1970 to more than 74 million currently­—the Social Security workforce is smaller in actual numbers, even before DOGE slashed the employee roster. In 1970, Social Security had 60,000 employees.

The Chicago Social Security Disability lawyers at Nash Disability Law, along with other advocates for elderly people and people with disabilities, know that it will now be more difficult to evaluate how the SSA is performing for us, the American people, and to hold the agency accountable.

In addition to other important measurements, the American people deserve what the SSA promised them earlier this year: “to know the wait time challenges they will face if [they are] unable to use the agency’s online services…[with an] honest and transparent view of wait times.”