The SSA (Social Security Administration) covers the needs of millions of Americans who have already retired, and while we all wish our retirement would come soon, those who have applied for their pension benefits in recent years have suffered delays, complaints and much frustration, and it was very complicated for our seniors to deal with some of the rules to apply for their pension, and the SSA has decided to eliminate them!
Even it was meant to prevent fraud, it only caused problems for our seniors, so they have decided to replace it with a new technology that also promises to speed up applications. Will that be true?
A mountain of applications…
At the beginning of this year, 2025, the SSA had accumulated more than 575,000 pending retirement applications, of which more than 140,000 had been unresolved for more than two months… You can imagine the situation of those 575,000 people who were patiently waiting for their pension. And of course, everything has an explanation, remember Elon Musk and his DOGE, right? Well, staff cuts worsened the situation after firing 7,000 employees, so those who remained obviously weren’t enough to fix everything.
The anti-fraud rule
All of this was made worse by a rule the agency implemented to “stop fraud,” but it only slowed the process. It required a mandatory three-day wait for applications made by phone. The result? Not only did it not reduce fraud, it increased delays by 25%. In other words, seniors kept waiting, but now for longer and with more frustration.
Step back
The measure was heavily criticized, both by retirees and by SSA employees themselves, and numerous retiree associations publicly denounced that this rule made no sense, so they decided to eliminate it.
Now it’s different, now they are going to use a more modern computer system designed to detect suspicious cases without having to slow down all applications, it will be a faster, more efficient system and it will not punish anyone!
The burden on workers
Of course, this hasn’t been completely fixed, but Deputy Commissioner Stephen Evangelista asked employees to process 10% more applications per day instead of hiring more people!! Of course this created unrest among staff that was already saturated enough to process even more applications.
The SSA’s response was to reassign about 1,000 employees from headquarters to local branches, but it’s not something immediate because they need to be trained, adapted and see if they fit in the process…
What retirees should do now
If you are going to apply for retirement in the United States, start the process three months in advance or maybe a little earlier, but you need to have margin so that everything arrives on time. The best option is to do it online: it is faster, it allows you to review everything calmly and it helps you avoid mistakes.
You will need to prepare your birth certificate, Social Security number, tax forms and banking information. You can check how your application is going from the official SSA website or, if you prefer, call or go to a local office.
Will the system improve?
Well, it is a government organization, we don’t have much faith, Social Security still has a lot of homework to do, but it is a big step, now the rule that slowed everything down will no longer move forward and now there will be technology to detect fraud without punishing our seniors when they reach their golden age.
Not everything will be solved quickly but at least they are trying to fix the chaos, if you are one of those who is about to retire, start early because you already know how slow everything is!