The Real Cost of Downsizing Social Security
Social Security’s group contact was worn down in levels. Because of downsizing, wait instances on the 1-800 quantity soared final yr, with experiences of hours-long holds. Bisignano promised to deliver waits all the way down to below ten minutes. To obtain that aim, he pulled varied SSA workers off their ordinary jobs—field-office customer support, cost processing, appeals, IT—to reply nationwide calls. Kathleen Romig, a former Social Security official and a fellow on the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, described this strategy as “whack-a-mole management.”
One day, Jean spoke to a payment-processing employee who had obtained solely three hours of coaching, in comparison with the standard three months, earlier than donning a headset. “She didn’t know what she was doing and could see that the customer was ours,” Jean stated. Bisignano claimed that automation of field-office telephone strains was “enabling 30 percent of calls to be handled through convenient self-service options.” I cited a determine of ninety per cent for the 1-800 quantity, and Jean suspected that that is the place the system was headed: full automation. She understood that some queries, similar to standing updates on pending purposes, “could be skimmed off the top,” however she did not consider {that a} bundle of ventriloquized code may deal with the troublesome instances, similar to a widow making an attempt to resolve when to assert her profit versus her useless husband’s. (The SSA spokesperson instructed me, “Americans are receiving better and faster service as a result of innovative technology and strategic staffing.” He added that every one customer-service representatives “receive appropriate training” and have entry to “ongoing technical support.”)
Field workplaces have been having to answer 1-800 calls on high of these coming via their direct strains. And even direct calls have been changing into oblique. As half of the regional consolidation, workplaces in distant counties may now reply calls and schedule appointments for Jean’s workplace, and vice versa. “Before, local calls would have all been answered by a person here—a community person,” she instructed me. “Now I’ve got to put you on hold because I’ve got to figure out who in which office is handling your claim.” Beneficiaries on the West Coast have been mistakenly scheduled for in-person appointments with Jean’s workforce. Other issues sat round for months, ricochetting between area workplaces and thru our on-line world:
“I go back in and double-check,” Jean said. “Everybody has a lot work to do. It’s all falling behind.”
Reported wait times for the 1-800 number did go down—to under seven minutes, as of April—but Romig, the former official agency, told me that there are various ways to fudge the numbers. For one thing, as noted in a 2025 report by the SSA’s inspector general, the agency was counting the wait for customers who requested a callback, rather than staying on the line, as zero. Jean noticed that the wait times displayed on her internal scorecard often exceeded an hour. And the agency didn’t track whether or not a caller’s problem was addressed. “So many calls are folks like me being instructed by AI, ‘Do you wish to grasp up?’ ” Jen Burdick, a legal-services lawyer in Philadelphia, instructed me. “Eventually, I get mad and say yes.”
Some metrics described as wins by Bisignano signaled hassle to advocates and observers. The quantity of pending preliminary claims for incapacity advantages had dropped by thirty per cent since 2024, and the common processing time was lower by forty per cent. A report by disability-rights organizations acknowledged the decreased backlog, however discovered that seven per cent fewer folks have been making use of for incapacity within the first place and that the grant fee had failed by three per cent. (That stated, the quantity of beneficiaries has decreased since 2015, in consequence of demographic shifts and frustrations with the appliance course of, Nancy Altman, the president of the nonprofit Social Security Works, instructed me.) An earlier research, printed within the American Economic Journaldiscovered that field-office closures led to a sixteen-per-cent decline in incapacity recipients within the surrounding areas.
