Social Security is directing employees who normally process benefits to answer phones instead

SSA’s processing center backlog—which stood at 6 million pending cases last year—is down by nearly 20% or over a million cases, the agency told Congress in November. Zhang Fengguo/Xinhua via Getty Images

The Social Security Administration is shifting more employees to its phone line, a move that employees say risks adding to backlogs and processing times for the public as employees who typically handle those workloads are reassigned to take calls.

Employees who receive and process retirement and disability claims, manage the agency’s technology and work in the agency's finances unit will be answering SSA’s phone line after only hours of training. The reshuffling comes after SSA pushed out over 7,400 employees last year, according to newly released government data. That total eclipsed the Trump administration’s intended target of shedding 7,000 SSA workers, a target it announced a year ago ...