The backlog of retirement applications at the Office of Personnel Management increased by 53% in January. It went from 15,097 at the end of December to 23,087 to close out January.
The increase was due to the annual surge of retirements that take place at the start of the year. OPM received 15,317 new claims in January, a 179% increase over the number received the month before.
OPM was also only able to process 7,327 in January. While this was more than had been done in several of the last few months, it still isn’t enough to fully offset the new surge of incoming claims.
While the numbers in January are impressive, they actually are not as big as last January’s figures, at least in terms of the impact on the total backlog. At the end of January 2016, the backlog jumped 73% thanks to 15,423 new claims that came in, almost the same number of new ones received this January. The total backlog a year ago stood at 19,761.
In its latest report, OPM noted that it processed 39% of the claims in 60 days or less and took 53 days, on average, to process a case in 60 days or less.
The latest statistics are included below.
Month | Claims Received | Claims Processed | Inventory (Steady state is 13,000) | Avg. # of Days to Process Case in 60 days or less | Avg. # of Days to Process Case in more than 60 days |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Oct-15 | 8,374 | 10,438 | 12,642 | 38 | 86 |
Nov-15 | 6,019 | 6,099 | 12,562 | 37 | 98 |
Dec-15 | 4,753 | 5,916 | 11,399 | 40 | 104 |
Jan-16 | 15,423 | 7,061 | 19,761 | 38 | 94 |
Feb-16 | 11,293 | 8,362 | 22,692 | 36 | 96 |
Mar-16 | 5,741 | 9,222 | 19,211 | 44 | 118 |
Apr-16 | 7,241 | 11,935 | 14,517 | 50 | 92 |
May-16 | 7,210 | 7,692 | 14,035 | 37 | 103 |
Jun-16 | 5,929 | 6,435 | 13,529 | 37 | 115 |
Jul-16 | 9,238 | 7,205 | 15,562 | 38 | 110 |
Aug-16 | 6,818 | 6,046 | 16,334 | 42 | 112 |
Sep-16 | 6,946 | 8,134 | 15,146 | 45 | 100 |
Oct-16 | 7,326 | 5,795 | 16,677 | 49 | 91 |
Nov-16 | 5,065 | 5,723 | 16,019 | 48 | 94 |
Dec-16 | 5,483 | 6,405 | 15,097 | 52 | 95 |
Jan-17 | 15,317 | 7,327 | 23,087 | 53 | 89 |