Social Security Lost About 8,000 Workers and Stopped Reporting Wait Times as Offices Close

The Social Security Administration has shed roughly 8,000 employees in fifteen months, and it has responded, in part, by no longer telling the public how long callers wait on hold. Meanwhile, field offices in more than a dozen states have gone phone-only or closed to walk-in visitors this year.

What You Should Know

SSA’s workforce fell by about 8,028 employees, a 14 percent cut, between January 2025 and April 2026, driven largely by the federal workforce reduction push, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). That is the agency’s largest one-year staffing loss on record, leaving SSA with fewer employees than at any point since 1967, CBPP reported.

More than 3,800 of the lost positions were customer-service staff who help people in field offices or on the agency’s 800 number, according to CBPP. SSA has reassigned remaining workers, including some who process claims, to answer phones instead.

The System Under Pressure

SSA confirmed to Newsweek that field offices in states including Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia were operating phone-only or closed to the public for stretches of this year. An SSA spokesperson told Newsweek the closures stemmed from “planned renovations, required maintenance, or facilities issues,” not staffing levels.

CBPP separately found that SSA stopped publicly releasing several customer-service metrics, including phone hold times and appointment wait times, starting in summer 2025, and published no monthly performance update in May 2026, making the true scope of delays difficult to verify.

The Receipts

“Our website, www.ssa.gov, is the best way to get help,” an SSA spokesperson told Newsweek, adding that anyone needing in-person service should schedule an appointment first. CBPP noted that Commissioner Frank Bisignano has said the agency will offset staffing losses through efficiency gains but “has yet to explain how it will do so.”

What Happens Next

CBPP is calling on SSA to publish a plan for addressing service backlogs and to resume releasing the wait-time and appointment metrics it stopped disclosing last year. Until the agency restores that reporting, Congress and the public will have limited ability to measure the delays facing beneficiaries.

References: Newsweek | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities