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The Numbers
7,500 employees gone — 13% of SSA’s workforce in one year, a 60-year staffing low
SSA lost roughly 7,500 employees between January 2025 and January 2026. That is 13% of its workforce. The agency is at a 60-year staffing low.
DOGE originally proposed cutting staff by 50% and closing dozens of field offices. Public pushback slowed some of that, but the damage is already real. More than a dozen offices in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, and New Mexico are temporarily closed or phone-only because there is nobody to run them.
DOGE also removed the ability to change direct deposit information over the phone. That forces roughly 2 million additional in-person trips per year to offices that are already understaffed or closed.
What That Means for People
| Metric | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Appointments within 30 days | 100% (target) | 78.3% |
| Employee-reported service quality decline | — | 65% say it declined |
| Employee-reported service speed decline | — | 70% say it declined |
| Field office visits (FY 2026 vs. prior year) | Baseline | 500,000 fewer |
Top Republicans in Congress admitted they were “out of the loop” as DOGE downsized SSA. NBC News reported that even committee chairs did not know the scope of the cuts until after they happened.
Those 500,000 fewer visits are not because fewer people need help. It is because access was cut. This is part of a broader assault on economic security and public benefits that reaches well beyond one agency.
What You Can Do
- Send the Social Security letter on Resistbot asking Congress to protect SSA offices, staffing, and benefits processing.
- Call your representative and ask whether they support the Repairing Social Security After Trump and DOGE Act (Rep. Norma Torres). The bill directs SSA to find everyone who missed benefits due to service disruptions and allows them to recover what they lost.
- Forward this to a parent, grandparent, or disabled person in your life who depends on SSA. They need to know what is happening to the agency they rely on.