A previous blog reported that about 50 federal lawmakers wrote a letter to President Donald Trump asking for the Social Security Administration to be exempt from the current hiring freeze instituted on federal employees. The good news is the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is in charge of administering Trump’s hiring freeze, granted three categories of exemptions for Social Security employees. The Social Security Administration can hire Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) who are in charge of making disability decisions, processing center employees who are in charge of processing Social Security payments, and hearing’s office support staff. Social Security currently has more than 1 million people waiting for disability hearings.
Exemptions to the hiring freeze will not alleviate Social Security’s ability to speed up the hearing process because lifting the hiring freeze only results in the agency being able to fill open positions. At best Social Security can hope for maintaining the status quo. There is no ability to add additional employees and Social Security’s operating budget is still 10 percent less than it was seven years ago.
Unfortunately the exemptions made to hearing staff and processing center employees does not apply to the hiring freeze that still exists at Social Security field offices. The field office is the first point of contact related to Social Security matters for most Americans. This is where claims for retirement and disability benefits originate. The OPM has not extended exemptions at this level, so it is not likely that we will see any improvement in wait times for people who visit their local Social Security office for service, in fact, we are likely to see wait times only increase as the hiring freeze prohibits Social Security from replacing employees who may leave the agency which creates open positions.
