A Year After DOGE Cuts, Social Security Is Trying to Stabilize

It has been more than a year since Elon Musk’s cost-cutting squad focused on the Social Security Administration and its vast amounts of data, spread falsehoods about widespread fraud and tried to use the agency to enforce the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.But one change from the Department of Government Efficiency era left a more lasting mark: the loss of roughly 14 percent of Social Security’s work force, which oversees the retirement, survivor and disability benefits paid to 75 million people each month.Today, the agency is in transition.Its commissioner, Frank Bisignano, who took the helm after the DOGE-led reductions, is pursuing major changes to the way the agency interacts with Americans and processes their claims.

He recently said technology improvements would ultimately save Social Security the work-hour equivalent of 2,500 full-time employees.The agency is also hiring and has open requests for 1,000 human positions.But the hole left by the departure of about 7,800 staff members continues to test those who remain, current and former employees said.

For the public, that has made it more challenging to secure appointment slots compared with a year ago, and has led to other service-related delays, frontline workers said.“The look on everybody’s face is they’re beat down, they are demoralized, they’re tired,” said Chris Delaney, a local union president in Hudson, N.Y., who represents Social Security workers and works for the agency as a claims specialist.Reshuffling WorkersThe job cuts touched the vast majority of Social Security’s 1,200 field offices across the country, most of which lost at least 10 percent of their staff, according to an analysis from AFGE Council 220, which represents field office employees.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times acco...