The COVID-19 pandemic stalled a lot of things in the country and one of them was the number of new Social Security disability claims being filed.
Many people have speculated the reason for a reduction in Social Security disability claims including stimulus payments, enhanced unemployment benefits and a lack of access to filing claims due to Social Security offices being closed, but that is expected to change.
As enhanced unemployment benefits wind down and Social Security offices open back up the agency is bracing for a substantial increase in the number of initial disability claims that are filed.
President Joe Biden has asked for a nearly 10 percent increase in funding for Social Security and the agency would plan to spend a good portion of that extra funding to address the increased number of disability applications it expects. According to a report from Social Security, the agency expected to complete 300,000 more disability claims in fiscal year 2021 than the previous year and 700,000 more in fiscal year 2022. Below is a portion of that Social Security report.
In FY 2021, we are replacing DDS staff losses and providing an additional 1,300 hires to position the DDSs to address the disability claims backlog and a potential spike in claims. The Budget will support maintaining these new hires in FY 2022 and fund increased overtime for a total FY 2022 increase of nearly 1,400 work years or 10 percent, allowing us to significantly increase our capacity to process disability claims. Compared to FY 2020, we plan to complete nearly 300,000 more claims in FY 2021 and over 700,000 more claims in FY 2022. However, the backlog will continue to grow until we work through the influx of initial claims, which will require a multi-year effort.
In addition to providing the DDSs with more funding, we continue to implement the common, national disability case processing system (DCPS2) across all State DDSs, which will improve efficiency, timeliness, and accuracy of decisions.
