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Calling the workforce “bloats”,” the Social Security Administration announced plans on Friday to cut around 7,000 jobs, or about 12% of its staff. The potential cuts are part of a larger restructuring at agencies that are in line with the Trump administration’s willingness to reduce the federal government.
The move comes as President Donald Trump repeatedly promised not to touch Social Security benefits. But key employee unions, supporters and Democrats have raised concerns that deep staffing will hurt customer service.
Furthermore, as the tail end of the baby boom generation reaches retirement age, it will decline at a time when the number of Americans receiving Social Security benefits is surged. Over 73 million people receive monthly payments from agents.
“We are in a 50-year staffing session, serving the most beneficiaries ever in the agency’s history,” said Rich Couture, a spokesman for the U.S. Government Employees’ General Committee on Social Security. “All this undermines the SSA’s ability to fulfill its responsibility to the American public for providing social security benefits.”
The agency’s rapid reorganization is led by Leland Dudeck, a representative committee member who Trump nominated for the Post two weeks ago. He is a mid-level career staff member in Social Security before being promoted, and he is actively restructuring his agency as Trump candidate Frank Vignano waits for confirmation from the Senate.
Dudek was placed on administrative leave at the start of February as investigations to work with Elon Musk’s government efficiency were pending, but instead the president decided to temporarily turn him into a top job.
The “critical focus” of the overhaul lies in “functions and employees that do not directly provide mission-critical services,” Social Security said in a press release.
As part of “significant workforce reductions,” agents provide early retirement and voluntary separation incentives for all employees. We hope that reducing the majority of this goal to 50,000 from the current approximately 57,000 employees will be achieved through these incentives and resignation.
However, the agency also warned that additional reductions from layoffs from layoffs that could include elimination of organizations and positions. Earlier this week it announced that it would close its civil rights and equal opportunity offices and place 140 workers on administrative leave.
Additionally, Social Security said it will merge 10 regional offices into four, reducing the number of organizations at the deputy committee level. Meanwhile, Doge lists lease terminations for almost four dozen institutional sites across the country, urging bipartisan concerns from some federal and state legislators.
The Trump administration has mandated drastic job cuts across the federal government, which cuts personnel delivery. Earlier this week, the administration instructed the agency to submit detailed plans on how to make a massive layoff with its initial set of plans through March 13th.
The Trump administration has specified that institutional restructuring should not have a negative impact on the delivery of services such as Social Security and Medicare, but Social Security Agency overhauls will affect benefits.
“The Trump administration’s policy decisions over the past few weeks have affected the lives of millions of Americans, and the consequences of years of major institutional disability will unfortunately be all clear,” he wrote.
This story has been updated with additional reports.
