We are now approximately half way through the month of January for 2022. The hangover of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays is slowly departing and many people are looking to get back to business as usual, well as much as business as usual during a pandemic can be, but it is likely going to take Social Security a while to handle the backlog of work accrued over the holidays and service times at the agency will likely be longer through the end of the month.
Not only is Social Security dealing with work piling up over the holidays, but January is already a busy month for the agency. A portion of Social Security employees retire each year at the end of the year, which leaves the agency with less staff and many older Americans decide to retire and apply for Social Security retirement benefits when a new year hits the calendar increasing workloads at the agency even further.
All of these types of things happen every year at Social Security so January can be a tough month for the agency, but adding to the pressure is the fact that Social Security has not received an appropriation from Congress for its Fiscal Year 2022 budget. Until that happens Social Security will be dealing with fewer funds and still has to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. The new Omicron variant of COVID-19, which has caused missed time for many employees at Social Security, is not helping either. All of these circumstances create difficult times to obtain services from the agency.
If you need to do business with Social Security and can wait on conducting that business for a while it would probably be a good idea to attempt to contact Social Security later in the year when things slow down somewhat.
