Projected reserve depletion · 78% of scheduled benefits payable upon depletion. 75-year balance: −4.55% of taxable payroll.
STAFFING · SERVICE · SOLVENCY
Social Security,
in perspective.
Explore staffing, service, and trust fund finances—with the evidence in view.
Historical DDS staffing: OIG report 072309 · July 18, 2025
New monthly SSA workload and separate OPM federal staffing views · reporting dates shown in each view
Keep workforce and reporting periods separate. Historical OIG data describe state DDS staffing and service. Monthly workload data describe processing units; OPM describes federal SSA employees. These populations are not combined. The six annual OIG observations support descriptive associations, not causal estimates.
SOCIAL SECURITY FINANCING · TWENTY YEARS
How the outlook changed. What the funds actually did.
Two clocks, two kinds of evidence. Forecast charts cover 20 report vintages, 2007–2026. Financial charts cover 20 completed calendar years, 2006–2025. Report-year forecasts are not actual outcomes. OASI and DI are separate legal funds; combined OASDI illustrates their joint finances and does not authorize transfers. SSI and Medicare are excluded.
No depletion within the 2026–2100 projection. 75-year balance: +0.13% of taxable payroll. This is not a guarantee beyond that horizon.
Projected reserve depletion · 83% of scheduled benefits payable upon depletion. 75-year balance: −4.42% of taxable payroll.
Latest projections, not historical actuals. Reserve depletion does not end incoming payroll taxes or taxation-of-benefits revenue. Payable percentages refer to the point of depletion, not every subsequent year. 2026 key results and definitions ↗
WHAT EACH REPORT PROJECTED
Twenty annual estimates of the long-range outlook
All historical forecasts here describe combined OASDI under intermediate assumptions, as reproduced in 2026 Table VI.B1. They are not separate historical OASI or DI depletion-date series. Each report advances its 75-year horizon; law, demographic and economic assumptions, experience and methods also change. A worsening balance cannot be attributed to a single cause from this chart.
ACTUAL FINANCIAL HISTORY
Annual income, costs, and reserves
Read the measures correctly
Revenue with and without interest
Total income includes interest credited on trust fund securities. Non-interest income in the table is derived as total income less net interest. Total cost includes benefits, administration and the Railroad Retirement interchange.
Stocks, flows, and dollars
Reserves are a year-end stock; income, costs and reserve change are annual flows. Dollars are nominal billions, not adjusted for inflation. The trust fund ratio compares reserves at the start of a year with cost during that year; it is not the same as year-end reserves divided by that year's cost.
Calendar-year accounting
SSA adjusts early January benefit payments to the year in which they were scheduled. These are comparable scheduled-benefit calendar-year figures, not unadjusted cash or fiscal-year accounts. Values are published to one decimal billion; rounding can prevent exact sums.
Actuarial balance
The 75-year measure uses present values of non-interest income and costs, starting reserves and a terminal reserve target, relative to taxable payroll. It is not this year's deficit, a percentage of GDP, or an exact across-the-board benefit cut. Solvency is distinct from DDS processing capacity; no staffing causal claim is inferred.
SSA Tables VI.A1–A3 and footnotes ↗ · Independent combined-fund cross-check ↗ · Sources, hashes and checks (JSON)
Captured October 29, 2026. Data downloads contain all 20 observations per series, regardless of chart filters. Data tables provide exact values and chart alternatives for screen readers. Print controls elsewhere on this page produce a historical DDS brief, not a solvency brief.
MONTHLY DISABILITY WORKLOAD
Demand, decisions, and cases still pending.
Where the work is processed. These are processing-unit figures, not claimant-residence or congressional-district counts. State DDSs, extended service teams, and federal assistance remain identifiable. This source supplies workloads, not monthly DDS staffing or processing times.
Received and determined
ReceiptsDeterminations
Cases pending at month end
Selected monthly series
Processing units in the selected month
Reporting calendar and coverage
SSA reporting months end on an operating Friday and contain four or five weeks. Per-week plots divide receipt and determination flows by the source’s reporting-week count; pending remains a stock. The table and exports retain the raw monthly counts.
“All reported units” sums the 57 units present in every loaded month: 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, four extended service-team codes, and FE federal assistance. Guam has no row in this loaded period; absence is not zero. The extended teams are kept separate from their host states. The federal-assistance workload row is separate from OPM’s agency-wide federal workforce.
SSA cautions that monthly summaries may not add exactly to annual reports because longer-period summaries incorporate corrections. These monthly determinations are not spliced into the historical OIG series.
SSA workload definitions ↗ · Official full workload CSV ↗ · SSA reporting calendar CSV ↗ · Source versions, hashes, and methodology (JSON)
FEDERAL SSA WORKFORCE · OPM
Federal staffing, in its own frame.
A separate workforce. OPM headcount covers federal Social Security Administration employees across all agency functions and locations, including pay and non-pay status. It excludes state DDS staff and contractors. It is not a count of disability examiners or disability-processing capacity.
Month-end employee headcount
Reported accession and separation actions
AccessionsSeparations
Federal workforce trend and source revisions
Source and workforce boundaries
Each month uses the OPM file currently marked current=true at capture. Rows are filtered to agency code SZ and verified against the agency name Social Security Administration; the numeric count field is summed. All duty stations and work schedules are retained.
File versions and publication dates are shown below. Published revisions can change earlier staffing counts; another SecurityStat view using an older capture may therefore differ. Historical OIG DDS staffing remains a separate source and period.
No federal SSA headcount is added to state DDS staffing, divided into DDS workload, or used to estimate a causal effect on disability decisions.
OPM data downloads ↗ · OPM API definitions ↗ · Every source file, version, publication date, count, and SHA-256 (JSON)
Source files for the selected ending month
THE NATIONAL PICTURE
Staffing and service moved together—unevenly.
Compare the size of each change on a common scale. A rising wait-time or pending-cases index means greater service pressure.
Experienced examinersProduction per workyearProcessing daysPending cases
WHAT CHANGED?
Selected period
READ THE PATTERN
More output need not mean shorter waits.
Completions describe work finished during a year; pending cases describe work still waiting. Processing time reflects the cases being completed, including older cases. These measures can move in different directions.
The source reports processing time that includes field-office nonmedical development before DDS referral. It is not a measure of DDS employee handling time alone.
Report definitions · printed page 2 ↗FOR CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT
Questions the evidence can help frame
How do experienced-examiner losses, vacancies, trainee workload, and time to proficiency affect capacity?
When does each DDS receive hiring authority, and can it replace departures throughout the year?
Are higher completions accompanied by stable accuracy, fewer returns, and shorter waits across case types?
What has SSA done on the OIG’s recommendations, and what staffing and cost estimates support its budget request?
EXPLORE ASSOCIATIONS
Does staffing track productivity?
Pearson’s r describes a linear association, not an effect per hire. Shared trends, COVID-era disruption, case mix, policy changes, training, and budget timing may explain part of the pattern. Selected role counts are not total workyears or PPWY’s denominator. No causal model or significance test is fitted.
Show the exact plotted pairs
Experience is more than headcount.
Examiner attrition exceeded total staff attrition.
Full-time examinersAll full-time DDS staff
DEMAND AND CAPACITY
Is completed work keeping up?
Claims received and determinations cleared
ReceivedCleared
Pending initial determinations
Follow the flow—and the reconciliation limits.
Receipts minus clearances is a demand–output gap. It is not an exact backlog-change equation. The residual below shows the difference between reported pending growth and that gap; it is not assigned to transfers, adjustments, or any other cause without supporting data.
STATE DDS COMPARISONS
Different workforces. Different pressures.
These appendix figures describe state DDSs, not residents of congressional districts. The five-year averages do not change with the national period selectors. No annual state staffing panel, cost, case-mix adjustment, or accuracy measure is supplied in these tables.
Source discrepancy: Table A–1 reports Montana examiner attrition of 62.8%; the narrative on printed page 5 gives 44.8%. This view preserves and flags the table value. A sensitivity check excludes Montana; no reconciled figure is asserted.
Show state chart values
Explore the published state table
MATCHED STATE DDS RESEARCH
The missing piece is a monthly DDS labor-and-time panel.
Monthly state comparison is not ready. Public monthly workloads are available, but a matching public series of monthly state DDS staffing/workyears and state processing times was not verified in the sources reviewed. Annual staffing, national monthly averages, and as-of state snapshots remain separate. No monthly staffing values or staffing–productivity correlations are inferred.
What the released sources actually contain
| Measure | Released geography and period | Monthly state match |
|---|---|---|
| Workload and pending | 57 processing units · monthly Aug 2024–Aug 2026 loaded | Available; labor input and processing time absent |
| DDS total staff | 55 source unit labels, including extended teams · annual FY2010–FY2023 | Annual observations cannot supply monthly staffing |
| SSDI processing days | National ALL / Awards / Denials · 69 report dates, Oct 2018–Jun 2024 | No state column |
| Initial / reconsideration processing days | State, regional and national rows · as of Feb 24, 2023 | One snapshot; standalone monthly window not established |
| Federal SSA employees | OPM agency-wide monthly headcount | Different workforce; never substituted for state DDS staff |
Annual state DDS staffing
SSA’s released workbook has 14 fiscal-year columns, FY2010–FY2023, and 55 source unit labels. The extracted unit table contains 770 published staff counts; their annual sums reconcile exactly to the workbook’s grand totals. Regional totals are excluded from the extract to prevent double counting.
Extended teams keep their original labels. Historical labels are not silently mapped to today’s processing-unit codes, and no annual value is repeated across months.
Processing-time releases need careful reading
The workbook named “Monthly SSDI Processing Times for FY2019 - 09-30-24” actually ends on June 28, 2024. Its 69 observations are national, with no state identifier. Neither its filename nor its SSDI title establishes a state DDS-only handling-time series.
The February 24, 2023 workbook supplies state/regional/national initial and reconsideration figures, but does not establish a standalone monthly averaging period. It remains a separate snapshot.
National monthly extract (CSV) · Original national workbook (XLSX)
As-of snapshot extract (CSV) · Original snapshot workbook (XLSX)
THE RIGHT DATA TO OBTAIN
Request the existing aggregate reports and their definitions.
SSA’s FY2023 Q3 Agency Priority Goal plan identifies MI Central for end-to-end initial processing time, DIODS for DDS staffing/workload used in direct production per workyear, and SAWS for allocating staff time across workloads. A historical OIG audit describes the FD-15 DDS Staffing and Workload Analysis report and month-end cumulative productivity. These identify likely sources to request, not a currently verified public monthly download.
Obtain processing-unit codes, code-change dates, exact SSA period boundaries and reporting weeks. Keep state, extended-team and federal assistance separate.
Ask for experienced and trainee staff, medical consultants, vacancies, and paid/direct workyears by workload. Headcount alone is not the denominator for PPWY.
Request DDS-only and end-to-end means, their start/end events, case counts and total elapsed days. A year-to-date average cannot be treated as a monthly mean.
Include receipts, clearances, transfers, returns, adjustments and pending. Keep initial, reconsideration and medical CDR workloads and program groups distinct.
Sources and reproducibility
SSA FOIA Reading Room ↗ · SSA measurement definitions · printed page 16 ↗ · Historical FD-15 audit ↗
A Mississippi legislative audit provides another useful lead, but its staff figures are annual/partial-year figures and a May 7, 2025 filled-position snapshot, rather than a monthly panel. Sources about state Departments of Developmental Services that share the acronym “DDS” are excluded from this Social Security workforce research.
Mississippi PEER report 721 ↗ · SSA national combined processing-time dataset ↗ · Coverage, source URLs, original hashes, and matching rules (JSON)
REPRODUCIBLE RESEARCH
Source measures. Explicit calculations.
New monthly sources
The Monthly workload and Federal SSA staffing views have independent date controls, source definitions, and CSV exports. OIG historical comparisons below retain their original FY2019–2024 data.
Download monthly source manifest and methodology · SSA monthly workload documentation ↗ · OPM workforce API documentation ↗
One report, preserved
SSA OIG report 072309 ↗
Staffing, Productivity, and Processing Times at State Disability Determination Services, July 18, 2025.
National values: Tables 1–2 on printed page 3 and Table 3 on printed page 4. State averages: Tables A–1–A–4. FY2019–2023 is the audit period; FY2024 was supplied for information.
What each measure means
- Staffing
- Source counts for three selected DDS roles. They are not total DDS employment, federal SSA headcount, or annual labor input.
- Production per workyear (PPWY)
- OIG-reported production relative to workyear resources. The dashboard preserves the reported series and does not divide initial determinations by selected role counts to recreate it.
- Processing time
- The national measure includes field-office nonmedical development before DDS referral. The report describes an average 37 days in field offices over the audit period; this is not subtracted from individual years. Appendix A–4’s DDS processing series is kept separate.
- Attrition and trainees
- Attrition is full-time staff separations during a year. State trainee share is the source’s five-year average of trainee examiners divided by full-time examiners each year.
Calculations and analytical limits
- Change = (ending value ÷ starting value − 1) × 100. Attrition comparisons use percentage points.
- Index = value ÷ selected starting-year value × 100. All displayed units remain labeled.
- Pearson correlation uses only the displayed pairs. Year-over-year changes require the preceding observation; lagged comparisons require the following service year inside the selected interval.
- Six national annual observations are too few for strong causal inference. Trends, serial dependence, the pandemic, policy changes, training, workload complexity, and funding may confound associations.
- State figures average five annual measures. They are not individual claimant records, annual staffing panels, or causal estimates. No district allocation or extrapolation to the current year is made.
- No costs, benefit losses, staffing targets, error rates, or budget savings are estimated from these tables.
Montana’s attrition discrepancy is retained in the raw data and flagged in views and exports. Table value: 62.8%; narrative: 44.8%. The source does not reconcile the two.
Useful next evidence
Extend with SSA state-agency workload data, aligning SSA’s operating calendar and preserving transfers and case-type definitions.
Use OPM workforce data in a separate federal SSA analysis. State DDS staff are outside that workforce.
Request comparable state-year workyears, accuracy, case mix, costs, vacancies, hires, and trainee cohorts before estimating effects or resource needs.
Obtain dated responses to all five OIG recommendations. Agreement in 2025 is not evidence of completion today.