Long Waits, Waves of Calls, Web Crashes: Social Security is Breaking Down [ETA: call wait times no longer reported publicly]

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The Social Security Administration — already reeling from plunging customer service following a rapid downsizing under the Trump administration — is drafting plans to begin layoffs of potentially thousands more employees as soon as next week.

DOGE determined that the 7,000 jobs eliminated since February under acting commissioner Leland Dudek through early retirements, buyouts, resignations and firings were not enough, the officials said.

Untested new software installed by DOGE employees crashing Social Security servers: report​

As the Post's Lisa Rein, Hannah Natanson and Elizabeth Dwoskin are reporting, "Even when the site is back online, many customers have not been able to sign in to their accounts — or have logged in only to find information missing. For others, access to the system has been slow, requiring repeated tries to get in."

On Monday the Post is reporting that massive panic set in last week after "many of the 7.4 million adults and children receiving monthly benefits under the anti-poverty program known as Supplemental Security Income, or SSI" were alerted they were "currently not receiving payments,” according to internal documents.

‘It’s a shambles’: DOGE cuts bring chaos, long waits at Social Security for seniors​

When Veronica Sanchez called a Social Security hotline Thursday, she waited two hours before her call was abruptly disconnected.

On Friday, she was on hold for six hours and still did not get through to anyone.

For Sanchez, the stakes are high: If she does not obtain a medical letter from the agency by April 15, her parents, who are on a fixed income, risk losing about $2,500 a month in medical care. They would no longer receive insulin medication for their diabetes, she said, and could lose their daily visit from a nurse.

But even if Sanchez shows up in person, she is not likely to speak to an agent. Field offices are no longer accepting walk-in appointments.

Andrew Taylor, 55, threw his hands up in the air Monday morning as he walked out of the Social Security office on Wilshire Boulevard.

“Everything is by appointment now,” a federal employee told a small group of people lined up on the sidewalk.

Social Security employees handed out a flier with a phone number and a QR code that people could scan with their phones to make an appointment. But the website kept returning an error message.

At a Los Angeles Social Security office on Crenshaw Boulevard, security guards did not allow anyone inside the building Monday without an appointment. A woman leaning on a walker approached the doors after getting out of her Uber. “We don’t have anything for you here right now,” the guard said. Her caretaker directed her back into the parking lot to call for another rideshare driver.

Elderly and disabled people — and those who care for them — are encountering a knot of bureaucratic hurdles and service disruptions after the Trump administration imposed a sweeping overhaul of the Social Security Administration system.

Last week, a coalition of advocacy groups, including the American Assn. of People with Disabilities, filed a federal lawsuit against the Social Security Administration, Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek, and Musk. It alleged that the agency overhaul “severely undermined” services and caused “significant and irreparable harm.”

[AAPD prez sez it's not just people trying to enroll...] People already connected to the system who needed support were also having trouble appealing benefits decisions or accessing medical services.

“You can’t get anyone on the phone,” she said.

The Social Security Administration did not respond to The Times’ requests for comment on the problems elderly and disabled people reported accessing services. The agency’s press office acknowledged in a string of posts on X that telephone wait times were too long and its website had faced challenges, but said the issues “predate the current Administration.”

Social Security wait times were already long under Biden. They're even longer under Trump.​

Could it be that they've fired a bunch of people who used to answer the phones? No!

When asked for an interview to discuss customer service delays and long wait times, a spokesperson provided a statement from Acting Commissioner of Social Security Lee Dudek, blaming former President Joe Biden, the agency's prior work-from-home policy and "advancing radical DEI and gender ideology over improving service for all Americans."

"The result was long wait times for customer service, unconscionable delays for benefit decisions, and insufficient stewardship of Americans’ hard-earned benefits," Dudek said in the statement. [Did Dudek add even more gender ideology to make the call times longer?]

"With our dedicated employees now leading the way, SSA will deliver on President Trump’s promise to protect Social Security by providing the high-quality service and stewardship that the American people expect and deserve."

Hold times on the 1-800 number were averaged 1 hour under the Biden administration and are now up to 90 minutes per call, Social Security Administration data shows. The wait times when USA TODAY placed calls to the 1-800 number over the past week ranged from 90 minutes to 150 minutes. Several times the line disconnected without reaching a live person.

Social Security stops reporting call wait times and other metrics
The changes are the latest sign of the agency’s struggle with website crashes, overloaded servers and long lines at field offices amid Trump cutbacks.

Social Security has stopped publicly reporting its processing times for benefits, the 1-800 number’s current call wait time and numerous other performance metrics, which customers and advocates have used to track the agency’s struggling customer service programs.

The agency removed a menu of live phone and claims data from its website earlier this month, according to Internet Archive records. It put up a new page this week that offers a far more limited view of the agency’s customer service performance.

Among the performance metrics now withheld was a “live data” section with current call wait time, callback wait time, number of callers waiting on hold and the number of callers waiting on callback.

Your call to a local Social Security office may be picked up by someone who can't help​

Phone calls to local Social Security offices are currently being rerouted to other field offices — often to staff who don't have jurisdiction over the caller's case, employees say.

"All SSA field offices are equipped to handle inquiries and resolve issues for callers, irrespective of where a caller lives or where their case originated," the spokesperson said in a statement. "SSA staff across the country have access to the necessary systems and information to assist with a wide range of Social Security matters."

But Amber Westbrook, a local union chapter president and field office employee in the Chicago region, said that's just not how the system works.

"Our system is very specific to the office that we can do things in," she explained. "So I, physically, if another claim is open in another office, I cannot clear their case. It's just kind of the way that they retain that to make sure that things are accurate and complete."

Westbrook said workers in other field offices may be able to see what's going on with someone's case, but if they're in the wrong jurisdiction they can't "actually take care of the issue."