The Trump administration has cut thousands of jobs at the Social Security Administration since January.
The historic cuts, made primarily through incentive programs with the threat of layoffs to follow, left the agency with the largest staff-to-beneficiary workload since 1967, as reported by the Washington Post.
The staffing changes fueled complaints about a crashing website, lengthy wait times for the agency’s 1-800 phone line and long lines at local field offices, including the one in Tampa.
READ MORE: The Social Security Administration's many proposed changes are worrying advocates
To reduce wait times in recent months, the agency temporarily reassigned around 3,000 field office employees to more public-facing positions, including managing the phone line.
That’s on top of the staff losses from Trump’s mass buyout programs and a year-over-year reduction in field office staff, according to a recent analysis of agency workforce data.
While the administration has stopped publicly sharing performance data, a recent survey conducted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., found that some people are waiting longer than three hours on the Social Security helpline.
SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano refuted this in a letter to the senator last week. He called the changes an “exciting customer service transformation” and pointed to a reduction in wait times since the introduction of AI assistants.
The impact on Social Security in Tampa
In Tampa, the nearly 160,000 people who get Social Security benefits have not been immune to these disruptions.
Shonda Johnson works at Tampa’s Social Security teleservice center in downtown Tampa, where phone operators take 1-800 calls. She answered calls for 10 years, but now she manages internet claims for retirement and disability benefits.
She also serves as a vice president with the American Federation of Government Employees Council 220, a federal employee union representing 25,000 field office and teleservice center workers.
Johnson said shuffling around field office staff, who typically address in-person issues, is creating a logistical nightmare.
“Moving the employees from the field offices will cause a backlog there,” she said. “You have employees doing jobs that they did not apply to do, nor is their grade designated to do.”
Backlog from reassigning field office staff
Higher-grade employees with the SSA are staff who can handle more complex cases and authorize the payout of benefits. With field officers yanked to cover phone lines, higher-grade employees are now filling in for the field office staff.
“So, now the field office employees are pulling employees that are hired to authorize and pay benefits to now work the service window,” Johnson said.
To accomplish the quick turnaround time, Johnson said Social Security has minimized the required training for phone operators. Onboarding new customer service representatives used to include four months of in-classroom training, Johnson said.
“Social Security has minimized the training for handling 1-800 number calls for the field office employees to a three- to four-page Microsoft Word document.”
Ending flexible work schedules
At the same time, Social Security ended the flexible work schedule for employees that allowed staff to clock eight hours between 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.
Now there are hard start and stop times for phone representatives, forcing some workers to take paid leave to accomplish routine errands, like dropping their kids at day care, Johnson said.
Taken altogether, she said it’s a more stressful work environment that will ultimately hurt beneficiaries’ experience.
"With the added amount of stress ... it will be harder to concentrate and provide the service at the level that we are used to providing it and the level that we would like to provide it at," Johnson said.
The fallout for beneficiaries
Kathleen Romig, the director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the flurry of changes to the benefits agency could mean longer phone wait times, hold-ups for complex cases and delays in receiving benefits.
“The agency’s primary focus right now is getting the phone answered more quickly,” she said. “They have less time to do what needs to be done to actually process the claims.”
She said she’s hearing of field offices that are being overwhelmed by walk-in visitors and closing their doors early, as well as beneficiaries who are waiting on checks for months after an approved claim.
Romig suspects this could be made worse by the Trump administration’s latest plans to force millions of beneficiaries to perform certain tasks, like a change of address, in person at a field office rather than online or by phone.
The policy proposal has flip-flopped in recent weeks and it is not currently being enforced, according to a blog post by the left-leaning policy group.
As the Social Security Administration turns 90 this week, Romig said she’s reminded how crucial the system is for the 73 million Americans it serves.
“Any one of us could be affected by something at any time where we qualify for a benefit. It could be the death of a parent or a spouse, it could be the onset of a disability, and then, of course, you know, most famously, retirement,” she said.
A recent Stateline analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data underscores the agency's importance. Its findings show the ratio of people older than 65 to children younger than 18 grew in every state, especially in Florida.
Gabriella Paul covers the stories of people living paycheck to paycheck in the greater Tampa Bay region for WUSF. Here’s how you can share your story with her.
