The Social Security Administration says phone wait times for callers with questions or who needed help were 15.9 minutes last year. SSA management says that it is down from 27.9 minutes the year before. They label this as “average time to answer.” Those numbers aren’t entirely true, according to a new Inspector General Report, that figure is much, much longer.
According to NetGov/FCW, “The average speed of answer includes people who wait on hold to speak with an agent until they get to that person or, critically, opt to get a callback. The agency counts callers that immediately request a callback as having a wait time of zero, bringing down the average.”
The real number, according to the Inspector General report on people who wait on the phone for a representative, is 51 minutes. For those who agree to be called back later, that figure is one hour and 51 minutes. The data were collected under pressure from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
The numbers show how, properly manipulated, they can tell a story very different from the real one.
The story is, or was, that the Trump Administration would dismantle the bureaucracy of Social Security and save money. In reality, the Trump administration, through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), cut thousands of employees and closed dozens of offices. The Federal News Network reported that at least 7,000 SSA workers had been laid off. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities had a figure that was about the same. It also stated, “Ultimately, thousands of employees resigned — including nearly half of the agency’s senior executives — leading to an unprecedented ‘brain drain’ of experience and talent.”
Over 75 million people receive money from the Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). That is a lot of people who might be left waiting on the phone.
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