Months after the Trump administration began cutting thousands of jobs at the Social Security Administration, disability advocates and benefits representatives say applicants are facing growing delays, reduced access to in-person services and mounting difficulties navigating the system.
The SSA has eliminated more than 7,100 positions since early 2025, reducing its workforce by roughly 13% as part of a broader federal effort to shrink government operations and expand automation.
According to reporting by Fortune, the restructuring has included office consolidations, increased reliance on online services and the wider use of AI systems on public phone lines.
The agency has said that changes have improved efficiency. SSA officials told Financial Express that call wait times on the agency's national phone line have dropped significantly and that disability hearing wait times have also improved. "Under this administration, Social Security is delivering better, faster, higher-quality service through technology and process improvements," an SSA spokesperson said.
But advocates working directly with applicants describe a different reality. The Financial Express also cited interviews with nonprofit organizations assisting more than 8,000 disability claimants annually which found that many applicants now face long phone waits, appointment delays, missing paperwork and growing difficulty obtaining in-person assistance.
"We just have so many cases that are stuck in purgatory because they don't have enough workers to work them," a Kansas City-based paralegal told researchers.
The impact has been especially pronounced for disability applicants, whose cases often require extensive medical reviews and multiple stages of appeals. Infobae reported that in Florida alone, initial decisions on Social Security Disability Insurance claims were already taking seven to eight months before appeals, which can extend the process by more than a year.
Researchers also pointed to a 7% decline in disability benefit applications during the first half of 2025 compared with a year earlier, raising questions about whether administrative barriers are discouraging eligible Americans from applying for assistance.
The staffing reductions come as the Social Security system serves nearly 75 million Americans, including retirees, disabled individuals and survivors, many of whom depend on monthly benefits as their primary source of income.
