Staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration (SSA) are putting a strain on the workers that remain.
The SSA announced in February that it aimed to cut 7,000 jobs, or around 12% of employees, to comply with federal workforce cuts ordered by President Trump.
“It appears to me, to the union, that they want to erode the promise of Social Security in order to convince the public at large that our 90-year program is a failure and that it needs to change and it needs to be privatized,” said John Pfannenstein, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3937, which represents almost 1,000 SSA employees in Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Idaho.
Initial cuts have been made primarily through early retirements and voluntary resignations, but union leaders anticipate more cuts are on the way.
SSA closed the Seattle regional office as part of a plan to reduce the number of regions from 10 down to four. Nearly 200 people worked at the Seattle regional office, which housed teams working on civil rights, accessibility for people with disabilities, and system modernization.
Pfannenstein said those workers have now resigned or been reassigned to other roles, often requiring lengthy training before they can start working.
The administration has also dissolved a virtual helpline for SSA staff, which helped claims technicians with complex cases. Pfannenstein said the loss of that support will only increase the number of improper payments.
Lines at field offices are growing longer as staffing drops and beneficiaries struggle to make sense of convoluted changes to instructions that put their monthly checks on the line, like new identification verification requirements.
“If you had any hesitations about what you need to do to maintain your only source of income or a large chunk of your income, it’s natural to want to reach out and try to see what’s going on,” said Patti Mansbach, a member of the AFGE Local 3937 executive board.
Staffing at field offices in Warrenton, La Grande, and The Dalles, Oregon, has been cut between 15 to 25%, Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement to the Labor Press.
Mansbach said field offices have been struggling for years. The SSA had more than 84,000 employees in 1980. Staffing declined around 20% that decade and then continued to drop, hitting a low of 56,907 in 2024. Over the same period, the number of people receiving benefits nearly doubled.
With the new staffing cuts, the wheels have come off the bus, Mansbach said.
At a comparatively “good office,” visitors face a two to three hour wait, Mansbach said. At a worse office, staff eventually have to close the door or else the line will get too long to be able to help everyone before the end of the day.
