Social Security Administration Announces Plans to Downsize Staff

The Social Security Administration announced Friday its plan to cut at least 7,000 employees from the agency and to close multiple regional offices to comply with recent executive orders from President Donald Trump.

The SSA recently set a staffing target of 50,000, down from its current level of approximately 57,000 employees, according to the announcement. The SSA clarified that rumors of a 50% reduction are false.

Initial steps to reduce the workforce have included offering a limited number of employees the opportunity to leave the agency under the Deferred Resignation Program and voluntary early retirement.

The agency also announced to all employees that it would soon implement “agency-wide organizational restructuring,” which includes offering voluntary separation incentive payments to all employees on a first-come, first-serve basis and expanding VERA to all employees. Both efforts require employees to opt in and to separate from the agency by specific dates.

According to the SSA, it anticipates that much of the targeted 7,000 in staff reductions will result from retirement, VSIP and resignation. Additional reductions will come from reduction-in-force action that could include eliminating organizations and certain positions.

All agencies are required to submit their RIF plans to the Office of Personnel Management by March 13. In addition, by April 14, agencies are expected to outline how they will consolidate management, become “more efficient” and potentially relocate offices to parts of the country less expensive than Washington, D.C.

“SSA has operated with a regional structure consisting of 10 offices, which is no longer sustainable,” the agency wrote in its announcement. “The agency will reduce the regional structure in all agency components down to four regions. The organizational structure at Headquarters also is outdated and inefficient. SSA will now have seven Deputy Commissioner level organizations.”

U.S. Senators Patty Murray, D-Washington; Chuck Schumer, D-New York; Ron Wyden, D-Oregon; and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, held a

Senator Murray said cutting staff that helps support the agency’s IT infrastructure will be detrimental to customer service.

“When you make it impossible for people to meet or talk to anyone about their Social Security benefits—that’s a benefits cut,” Murray said. “Maybe making it impossible to talk to a real person is a good business model in Silicon Valley, but it’s not how our government should treat taxpayers.”

Leland Dudek is currently serving as the acting Social Security commissioner, following the resignation of Michelle King, the former acting commissioner, last month.

Terminations are occurring across federal agencies, including at the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration. Several probationary employees were laid off last month, but it is unclear how many.

In addition, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs—a federal contractor watchdog—announced in a February 25 memo to Acting Secretary of Labor Vince Micone that it will shift from 55 offices to four and reduce its 479 employees to 50.