Social Safety unraveling: 7,100 employees sacked, efficiency metrics retired, incapacity claims falling

The company cut more than 7,100 jobs – greater than 13% of its workforce and its largest staffing cut ever. It closed six of its 10 regional offices, moved more services online and expanded using automated and synthetic intelligence techniques on its public telephone strains.

Some guidelines modified and altered again once more. For example, Social Safety officers announced in March 2025 that individuals would not have the ability to apply for advantages on the telephone, solely to reverse course a month later.

We’re social work professors at California State University, Sacramento, Binghamton University in New York and the University of Wisconsin-Madison who examine these applications. And we have each independently found that even earlier than 2025, it was hard to get disability benefits.

Now, we’ve discovered that the method has grow to be even more durable.

Lacking metrics

In June 2025, the company removed key customer service metrics, reminiscent of telephone wait instances and incapacity declare processing instances, from its web site. This knowledge had offered the general public with important transparency in regards to the company’s efficiency.

Missing perception into the impacts of the various modifications underway, we launched a venture to check how they have been affecting entry to incapacity advantages. We interviewed benefits representatives – attorneys, social employees and other forms of advocates who assist candidates and beneficiaries navigate Social Safety techniques.

We carried out in-depth interviews with 52 advocates at 32 nonprofits, reminiscent of authorized support companies and incapacity organizations. These organizations collectively help over 8,000 individuals yearly.

We’re referring to those advocates by pseudonyms to take care of their privateness. Many insisted that neither they nor their employers be recognized resulting from worry of retaliation by the Trump administration.

We published our findings in collaboration with two nationwide incapacity advocacy organizations, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund and the American Association of People with Disabilities, in March 2026. We took the step of publishing with these organizations earlier than submitting our work to tutorial journals as a result of we wished to share these findings with the general public as quickly as attainable.

16 million individuals get these advantages

The Social Safety Administration is a federal company that runs among the nation’s greatest social security web applications, together with advantages for greater than 60 million retired employees, in addition to survivor benefits for the spouses of workers who have died and their youngsters who’re beneath 18.

As well as, the company administers two sorts of incapacity advantages to a complete of 16 million people.

Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, is a public help program for low-income older adults and other people with disabilities beneath age 65. In 2026, it provides a maximum of US$994 monthly for anybody individual getting advantages.

Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, supplies a restricted pension for many who have labored lengthy sufficient to qualify and now have disabilities that forestall them from working any longer. Funds range based mostly on one’s previous wages, however the monthly average in 2026 is about $1,634.

To obtain both form of advantages, People should meet the Social Security Administration’s strict definition of disability, which considers well being standing, previous schooling and employment and age to find out if a bodily or psychological incapacity makes somebody unable to work.

There aren’t any deadlines on how lengthy you’ll be able to obtain SSI advantages. However youngsters and adults beneath age 65 are topic to periodic assessments of their eligibility and must adhere to the program’s rigid rules. For instance, they will’t have greater than $2,000 in belongings at any time whereas receiving advantages, should submit their pay stubs for any earned revenue month-to-month, and should report any modifications of their residing state of affairs, marital standing or financial institution accounts.

Encountering lengthy wait instances and chatbots

The Trump administration made no formal modifications to eligibility standards for SSI or SSDI, regardless of considering proposals that could have narrowed eligibility guidelines and probably excluded tens of millions who qualify for these advantages at this time or reduced the size of benefits payments for many individuals with disabilities.

However when the City Institute, a nonpartisan analysis middle, analyzed state-level knowledge from the primary half of 2025, it discovered that 7% fewer claims for disability benefits were submitted to the Social Safety Administration than throughout the identical interval a 12 months earlier.

We obtained extra perception into these modifications throughout our interviews.

We heard that with fewer staff, the company had fewer individuals out there to reply telephone calls, contributing to lengthy waits. Customer support protocols additionally modified in order that telephone calls to the Social Security Administration have been routed to discipline places of work the callers hadn’t dialed, the place workers couldn’t assist them.

Different advantages representatives encountered AI chatbots that didn’t reply their questions, or discovered that staffers with specialised data had been reassigned to carry out different duties.

“I simply have so many circumstances which can be caught in purgatory as a result of they don’t have sufficient employees to work them,” mentioned Jane, a paralegal we interviewed in Social Safety’s Kansas Metropolis area. “They don’t have sufficient employees to reply the telephone to inform me what’s occurring to them.”

Area workplace frustrations

One other supply of friction emerged round visits to Social Safety Administration discipline places of work.

The agency has more than 1,200 field offices throughout the nation the place individuals can search companies. Shortly earlier than Trump took workplace in 2025, the company started shifting from walk-in companies to requiring appointments. However the Social Security Administration had promised in 2024 that it will “not flip individuals away” in the event that they couldn’t or didn’t wish to make an appointment.

And but advantages representatives informed us in 2025 that many discipline places of work did require appointments, and turned individuals away in the event that they arrived with out them.

This was particularly irritating as a result of it was onerous to make these appointments over the telephone anymore, mentioned Freddie, a advantages consultant within the Denver area. “Now, we will’t attain anyone at Social Safety,” she informed us. “We are able to’t get via to make an appointment.”

As of Could 2026, 10 places of work in 9 states are either open on an appointment-only basis or closed to the general public till additional discover.

Obstacles on-line and in individual

The Social Safety Administration’s push to conduct enterprise on-line assumed that everybody may simply use digital platforms. However that’s merely not true for most of the most weak low-income individuals with disabilities who’ve or are making use of for SSI and SSDI advantages.

As Michael, an lawyer within the Atlanta area, defined, it’s not affordable to imagine that “somebody who’s of their 20s, however unhoused” or “somebody of their 70s and having points with reminiscence loss” can deal with a web-based utility course of.

One other problem is the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, which has now prolonged to people who find themselves licensed to reside in the USA. Many immigrants who get incapacity advantages, or who help their kin with SSI and SSDI advantages, are not certain it’s secure for them to go to Social Safety places of work.

These fears have been strengthened in February 2026, as reviews emerged that some Social Safety employees had been told to share appointment data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers.

A number of advantages specialists informed us they not know methods to advise such shoppers in regards to the potential dangers of interacting with the Social Safety Administration, together with whether or not it was secure to go to discipline places of work or whether or not the company may share their data with immigration authorities.

Dying whereas ready

Workers cuts meant that the problem-solvers who advocates had as soon as turned to had left, taking years of experience with them. The company’s remaining workers members have been more durable to achieve than ever. Some have been much less aware of the intricacies of the Social Safety Administration’s insurance policies and procedures than their senior colleagues who had left.

As incapacity advantages have grow to be more durable to acquire, many individuals are struggling. We heard a number of accounts of terminally sick shoppers dying earlier than receiving advantages for which they have been eligible.

For instance, Anne, an lawyer within the company’s Philadelphia area, described the case of a homeless, critically sick consumer who couldn’t transfer ahead as a result of Social Safety Administration workers informed her that they couldn’t find paperwork she had submitted three years earlier.

“This girl is dying,” Anne mentioned. “All it’s a must to do is push just a little button to get this shifting, and also you’re telling me you’ll be able to’t.”

Miranda, an lawyer within the Philadelphia area, defined that previously, she advocated for shoppers over complicated authorized points. In the course of the second Trump administration, that’s modified.

Now, her shoppers might discover that they want an lawyer merely “to ensure one thing will get off somebody’s desk after which faxed into the system.”

Faxing, hardly ever mandatory for many on a regular basis enterprise transactions, is commonly used during the disability benefits application process.

“It’s taking extra of my time to do the identical quantity of labor, which then means we’re not capable of take as many circumstances” mentioned Megan, a paralegal within the Boston area.

Suggesting attainable enhancements

Our report includes recommendations for bettering how the Social Safety Administration responds to functions for incapacity advantages.

In our view, the company ought to make use of sufficient individuals to deal with all functions and appeals in a well timed and correct method whereas defending the information privateness and accessibility for all candidates – together with these from immigrant households.

We additionally consider that the company’s leaders could be smart to hear critically to suggestions from skilled advantages representatives who assist individuals with disabilities apply for SSI and SSDI advantages, reminiscent of these we interviewed, and their shoppers.

Katie Savin, Assistant Professor of Social Work, California State University, Sacramento; Callie Freitag, Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Matthew Borus, Assistant Professor of Social Work, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This text is republished from The Conversation beneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the original article.