If you walk into a store, restaurant or virtually any other sort of business you are likely to see a help wanted sign. The lack of employees across all industries has been felt and it is no difference for Disability Determination Services (DDS).
It is the responsibility of disability examiners at DDS to make disability determinations on Social Security disability cases at the lower levels of claims. Recently the National Association of Disability Examiners released its latest newsletter. The newsletter indicated information about DDS’ 2021 training conference where it was revealed that DDS is in need of more disability examiners to handle the load of disability cases. Below is a portion of the newsletter that discusses DDS’ challenge of maintaining a well staffed group of disability examiners.
Hiring has increased, but John acknowledged that hiring has been difficult across the country with fewer applicants and fewer people accepting positions. Training a large number of new examiners contributed to our inability to meet the clearance goal for claims at the initial level this year. The good news is there’s been no reduction in budgets for hiring or overtime. ODD anticipates that overtime will be available throughout the next year.
Jeremy was optimistic for a continuing resolution with hiring authority in place until December. . He noted that in FY 2020, DDS reported 15 applicants per available position with the agency. In FY 2021, that number fell to nine people applying for each job. Overtime will be available in the first quarter, he said. There should be enough to meet all DDS needs. Workloads are expected to increase, so overtime will be made available to work that increase. There will be a lot of attention on processing time in the coming year. Each agency will have goals to meet in this regard in FY 2022.
