Layoffs at Social Security
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
Federal agencies have until today to submit reorganization plans to the Office of Management and Budget. Those plans include layoffs, and the Social Security Administration is not immune. The agency is slated to reduce its staff by 7,000 employees, and many are worried about the problems that could result. Then, a wide-ranging antitrust probe into Microsoft is moving ahead, and students are suing the feds after staff cuts at federally-run tribal colleges.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Layoffs at Social Security from Marketplace. |
| 0:05.6 | I'm Sabri Beneshore in for David Brancaccio. |
| 0:07.4 | Today is the deadline for federal agencies to hand in reorganization plans to the Office of Management and Budget. |
| 0:15.3 | That includes layoffs and the Social Security Administration is not immune. Marketplaces Nancy Marshall Marshall-Genzor, joins us to talk about it. |
| 0:24.0 | Hi, Nancy. Good morning. So Social Security says it's reducing its staff by 7,000 employees from about 57,000 workers to 50,000. So how will they do that? |
| 0:37.3 | Social Security is offering early retirement and also a voluntary separation incentive. |
| 0:43.5 | The agency says much of the staff reduction will be voluntary, but there will be layoffs. |
| 0:49.7 | So what does all this mean for people receiving Social Security benefits? Will there be delays or problems with their payments? |
| 0:57.1 | Social Security says it's committed to ensuring that its plan has a positive effect on the delivery of services. |
| 1:04.8 | I talked to Jack Small again about this. He worked at the Office of Management and Budget for almost 30 years, focusing on Social Security. |
| 1:12.5 | He's now at the Urban Institute. He's worried that longtime IT staffers will leave. He says that could |
| 1:19.0 | cause problems this fall when cost of living adjustments are made to Social Security payments |
| 1:24.2 | and Medicare premiums change. Those are usually deducted from Social Security. |
| 1:29.4 | If there is an error made in that process, you could have wrong payments going out. And it could take |
| 1:36.4 | a long time to resolve that. What about Social Security field offices around the country? This is |
| 1:41.8 | where you go if you want to talk to a real human being face-to-face. |
| 1:44.6 | How would those be affected? It's not clear at this point, but Rich Couture, an attorney at the |
| 1:51.5 | agency and a union official told me if Social Security loses thousands of its frontline workers, |
| 1:57.7 | there will be an impact. An absolute negative impact upon wait times, upon |
| 2:02.9 | processing times, upon the ability to schedule appointments for in person services in terms of |
| 2:09.8 | wait times to get a disability hearing in front of a judge. And Elon Musk's Doge website lists |
| 2:15.3 | almost 50 Social Security leases. It says it's terminating. It does not say whether it's |
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