Updated February 28, 2025 at 16:35 PM ET
The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced Friday that it aims to cut some 7,000 jobs to align with an executive order from President Trump to broadly slash the federal workforce.
The planned job cuts are raising concerns about staffing at the agency that disburses retirement benefits, as well as disability and survivor benefits, to tens of millions of Americans.
"The agency plans to reduce the size of its bloated workforce and organizational structure, with a significant focus on functions and employees who do not directly provide mission critical services," the SSA said in a news release Friday afternoon. "Social Security recently set a staffing target of 50,000, down from the current level of approximately 57,000 employees."
Advocates say long wait times for services have plagued the agency for years, and its current staffing is already at about a 50-year low.
Ahead of the looming broader cuts, a number of senior staff members have departed the SSA, including at least five of eight people in the influential role of regional commissioner, according to a staffing memo shared with NPR by a senior SSA official who was not authorized to speak to the press.
"SSA has operated with a regional structure consisting of 10 offices, which is no longer sustainable," the Friday news release said. "The agency will reduce the regional structure in all agency components down to four regions."
Morale at the agency is extremely low, the senior SSA source said, as staff members are crying in meetings and managers are trying to reassure their employees during a time of great uncertainty.
"The public is going to suffer terribly as a result of this," the source wrote to NPR. "Local field offices will close, hold times will increase, and people will be sicker, hungry, or die when checks don't arrive or a disability hearing is delayed just one month too late."
"Hopefully Congress takes note of the mass resignation of the Regional Commissioners and starts asking questions," the source concluded.
Rich Couture — a spokesman for AFGE SSA General Committee, a union representing roughly 42,000 Social Security workers — told NPR, "AFGE is adamantly opposed to any mass layoffs" of its workers, "whether front line or support staff." Front-line workers directly support beneficiaries, the number of whom, he said, increases by 10,000 people daily.
"SSA is at its lowest staffing levels in 50 years while taking care of more Americans than ever," Couture said in a statement. "We need to retain our frontline workers who directly serve the public as well as those workers who provide critical support for the frontlines. Any cuts will ultimately hurt the public and undermine delivery of Social Security benefits."
Trump has said that Social Security "won't be touched" as he continues to make sweeping cuts to the federal government.
The agency's release said the planned reorganization will "prioritize customer service." It added: "SSA is committed to ensure this plan has a positive effect on the delivery of Social Security services."
Friday's announcement from the SSA followed guidance on Wednesday from the Trump administration for federal agencies to develop plans for the large-scale elimination of positions, in line with Trump's Feb. 11 executive order.
New leadership raises new concerns at the SSA
Until now, the SSA has been largely spared from efforts, mainly overseen by billionaire Elon Musk, to slash the size of the federal government. That includes a federal hiring freeze and more recent dismissals of large numbers of mostly newer workers.
New leadership at the agency has carried out more targeted changes, like closing its Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity.
Any change to Social Security that could affect benefits is typically considered a political liability. Social Security remains one of the most popular government programs and it is how most Americans save for retirement.
To that end, Trump and Republican congressional leaders have vowed to protect Social Security from their planned cuts to government spending.
But in the last week or so, the agency has faced much of the same chaos and disruption that has been experienced by other federal departments. Changes at the agency are also leading to worries among employees and cybersecurity experts about the protection of sensitive records.
The agency's prior acting commissioner, Michelle King, was recently replaced after clashing with associates of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency who sought access to sensitive personal data held by the agency. That's according to the senior SSA official who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity. King has not responded to NPR's requests for comment.
King has been replaced by Leland Dudek, who was being investigated internally before being promoted, according to the SSA official.
The protection of sensitive data is one of the top concerns for SSA employees.
"SSA is incredibly risk averse. And for good reason," the SSA official said. "The data we house is intimate and comprehensive. Every U.S. man, woman and child (living and dead), has a Social Security Number and records of their work, income, tax, disability and civil relationships. And now DOGE has access to all of it."
The SSA's servers are vast, complex and archaic, processing billions of data points a day, often using programming languages that few people are familiar with, the source continued. Those systems are already under constant attack by digital adversaries from around the world, creating a constant challenge for those tasked with protecting the systems.
There are no indications that the engineers working with DOGE have gone through required training to protect federal records, the source said, nor specific agency-level training to work in each department's unique systems. Lawmakers have already begun to raise the alarm about cybersecurity concerns of DOGE's access to federal systems, while legal cases about DOGE's access are ongoing.
Musk says he's trying to protect Social Security — but parrots baseless claims
Musk said on social media that his goal it not to slash Social Security benefits, but to "stop the extreme levels of fraud taking place, so that it remains solvent and protects the social security checks of honest Americans."
Musk has not provided proof for his claim of "extreme levels of fraud." He's pointed to recipients in the SSA database who are impossibly listed as well over 100 years old.
But a 2023 report from the agency's Office of Inspector General said there were nearly 19 million Social Security number-holders who didn't have information about their deaths in the system, and "almost none of the 18.9 million numberholders currently receive SSA payments."
Acting Commissioner Dudek himself knocked down Musk's claim as well.
Advocates complain of long-running issues with disability benefits
And now the agency is preparing for a significant cut to its workforce.
Charles Hall, an attorney who has been representing Social Security disability claimants in particular since 1979, said staffing issues at the agency have been a persistent problem for people seeking benefits.
"Disability claims have been progressively affected by Social Security's lack of staffing, literally for at least 20 years," he said. "It certainly has become more and more of an issue."
Max Richtman, president & CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told NPR that the process to get disability benefits, in particular, is "so cumbersome and difficult to navigate" and insufficiently staffed that in the last couple of years, "about 10,000 claimants who appealed for their benefits die waiting for their claim to be resolved."
Hall said improvements in technology have also yet to cover this increase in workload. Because disability claims are done on paper and labor intensive, technology is not enough to solve the problem.
"It requires a lot of manpower," Hall said. "This is much more labor intensive than people would imagine… They only think in terms of retirement benefits, which are relatively simple, but the other workloads get pretty complicated."
Richtman said that wait times for assistance from agency staff is only going to get worse if the Trump administration makes deep cuts in the workforce. He said Americans pay into Social Security through a payroll tax, so they deserve to access those benefits.
"It really should be looked at, I think, through a different lens and the rest of, you know, whatever else is happening at the federal government and downsizing," he said.
Copyright 2025 NPR
