7,000 jobs, prompting fears of customer service impact
Tami Luhby, CNN
Sat, March 1, 2025 at 11:02 AM GMT+8·3 min read
151
The seal of the US Social Security Administration outside
the agency headquarters in Woodlawn, Maryland, US, on
Wednesday, February 19, 2025. - Stefani
Reynolds/Bloomberg/Getty Images
The seal of the US Social Security Administration outside
the agency headquarters in Woodlawn, Maryland, US, on
Wednesday, February 19, 2025. - Stefani
Reynolds/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Calling its workforce “bloated,” the Social Security
Administration announced Friday plans to slash about
7,000 jobs, or roughly 12% of its staff. The potential cuts
are part of a larger reorganization at the agency in line
with the Trump administration’s drive to downsize the
federal government.
The move comes as President Donald Trump has
repeatedly promised not to touch Social Security benefits.
However, a key employee union, advocates and
Democratic lawmakers are raising concerns that deep
staffing cuts will hurt customer service.
What’s more, the reduction will hit at a time when the
number of Americans receiving Social Security benefits is
soaring, as the tail end of the Baby Boom generation
reaches retirement age. More than 73 million people
receive monthly payments from the agency.
“We’re at a 50-year staffing low, and we’re serving the
highest number of beneficiaries we’ve ever had in the
history of this agency,” said Rich Couture, a spokesperson
for the American Federation of Government Employees’
Social Security General Committee. “All of this will
adversely undermine the ability of SSA to fulfill its
responsibilities to the American people for the provision
of Social Security benefits.”
The agency’s swift reorganization is being led by Leland
Dudek, the acting commissioner whom Trump named to
the post less than two weeks ago. He was a mid-level
career staffer at Social Security before being elevated,
and he is aggressively reshaping the agency as Trump’s
nominee, Frank Bisignano, awaits Senate confirmation.
Dudek had been placed on administrative leave pending
an investigation earlier in February for working with Elon
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, but the
president instead decided to put him in the top job
temporarily.
A “significant focus” of the overhaul will be on “functions
and employees who don’t directly provide mission critical
services,” Social Security said in a press release.
As part of its “significant workforce reductions,” the
agency is offering early retirement and voluntary
separation incentives to all employees. It expects much
of its goal to lower its headcount to 50,000, from the
current roughly 57,000 employees, will be achieved
through these incentives, as well as resignations.
But the agency also warned that additional cuts will come
from layoffs, known as reduction-in-force actions, that
could include the elimination of organizations and
positions. Earlier this week, it announced it would shutter
its Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, placing
140 workers on administrative leave.
In addition, Social Security says it will consolidate its 10
regional offices into four and reduce the number of
deputy commissioner-level organizations it has.
Meanwhile, DOGE has listed lease terminations for nearly
four dozen agency sites across the country, prompting
bipartisan concerns from some federal and state
lawmakers.
The staffing cuts come as the Trump administration is
mandating sweeping headcount reductions across the
federal government. Earlier this week, the administration
directed agencies to submit detailed plans on how they
will conduct mass layoffs, with the first set of plans due
March 13.
Although the Trump administration has specified that
agencies’ restructurings should not negatively affect the
delivery of services such as Social Security and Medicare,
the overhaul at the Social Security Administration will
have an impact on benefits, Jack Smalligan, a senior
policy fellow at the Urban Institute and former deputy
associate director at the Office of Management and
Budget focusing on Social Security issues, wrote on X.
“The policy decisions by the Trump Administration in
these past weeks will affect the lives of millions of
Americans and in the years ahead the consequences of
crippling a key agency will unfortunately be all to
evident,” he wrote.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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Baltimore Sun
Trump, DOGE to cut Social Security staff in half, slashing
more federal workers
Carson Swick, The Baltimore Sun
Fri, February 28, 2025 at 6:01 AM GMT+8·2 min read
8
Lloyd Fox/The Baltimore Sun/TNS
The Social Security Administration has been instructed to
reduce its staff by half as President Donald Trump’s
administration continues to pursue widespread cuts
across the federal government, according to multiple
media reports.
Headquartered in Woodlawn, Maryland, the Social
Security Administration is one of the locally based federal
agencies that employs Maryland’s large federal
workforce. The state is home to more than 160,000
federal workers.
The SSA has been among the sites where protests have
been held during the first month of Trump’s second term,
as Maryland lawmakers, federal workers and their
supporters have called for saving government jobs.
Some SSA staffers anonymously told The Washington Post
Wednesday that the agency was directed to “swiftly
produce plans” for staffing cuts. The General Services
Administration says terminations at the SSA are
“imminent,” according to an X/Twitter post from
Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein.
According to sources cited by The American Prospect,
acting SSA commissioner Lee Dudek requested Tuesday
that managers present him with a plan to reduce the
staff’s 57,000 employees by Thursday afternoon. The cuts
could impact more than 1,200 Social Security field offices
across the country, the outlet reported.
Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk
has framed the cuts as necessary and consistent with his
department’s efforts to curb wasteful spending while
insisting that the Trump administration is only targeting
non-essential employees.
“We wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is
essential and doing that job well,” Musk said during the
Trump cabinet’s first meeting on Wednesday. “But if the
job is not essential or they’re not doing the job well, they
obviously should not be on the public payroll.”
The SSA closed both its Office of Transformation and
Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity earlier this
week, leading to about 190 workers being put on
administrative leave. Dudek — who assumed leadership
of the agency upon the resignation of previous leader
Michelle King over DOGE access concerns — has publicly
railed against these offices as “wasteful” and
“duplicitous,” respectively.
