• 14
  • October
    2011

An unusual extra week between federal fiscal years resulted in a slowdown for the Social Security Administration (SSA). Those awaiting social security disability decisions may now have to wait a little longer after the SSA requested that workers process fewer cases during the gap week.

The federal fiscal year runs from October 1 of the prior year through September 30 of the year being described. However, the federal government uses a 52 week fiscal calendar. Every five or six years, a fiscal year would be 53 weeks long. The last week of September ended up being a week between fiscal years 2011 and 2012.

SSA leaders set numerical goals for judges and field officers to speed cases. The practical effect at the SSA was that adjudications done the last week of September did not count toward those annual numerical targets.

The Wall Street Journal, reported that managers told employees and judges not to close out cases. As a result the Social Security Administrator's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review only closed 230 cases nationally on one day during the last week of September when it usually averages 3,000.

Currently the numbers of pending cases just keeps increasing. Here are some of the relevant statistics:

  • Close to 750,000 Americans are awaiting decisions
  • Approximately 10 million Americans are already in the program
  • 3.2 million Americans are projected to file new applications in 2011
  • The average processing time for a case takes more than a year

The SSA has 1,500 Administrative law judges and thousands of other employees across the country, but it is unclear whether that is sufficient to clear the backlog and decide cases in a timely manner.

Source: Disability Payments Slow as Managers Chase Targets