Each month Social Security releases the average time a person who has applied for Social Security disability has to wait until a hearing is scheduled from the date of request. Nationally we have always informed that typically it takes about 12-15 months before a hearing will be scheduled, but that is no longer the case. Every hearing site across the country, with the exception of three, has wait times of at least 12 months or longer which you can see here.
The three hearing sites that offer less than a 12-month wait until a hearing is scheduled are Fort Smith, Arkansas (8 months), Providence, Rhode Island (11 months) and Shreveport, Louisiana (9 months). There are actually more hearing sites, five to be exact, that have average wait times of two years or more. These hearing sites include Brooklyn, New York (24 months); Buffalo, New York (25 months); Fayetteville, North Carolina (24 months) and two hearing sites in Puerto Rico – Ponce (26 months) and San Juan (24 months).
In addition to checking out how long you may have to wait for a hearing to be scheduled, you can look at the workloads of each hearing’s office. Currently, the three hearing sites with the highest number of cases pending, which is more than 14,000 at each of them, are Charlotte, North Carolina, Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Orlando, Florida.
Considering the majority of the clients that we have assisted over the years have their hearings at the Minneapolis hearings office it’s always a good idea to see how things are going locally. Right now the average wait time until a hearing is scheduled in Minneapolis is 14 months and that office has more than 12,000 cases pending. Unfortunately Social Security has indicated that wait times may increase further.
