OPM’s Retirement Backlog Surges 53% in January

The annual surge of retiring federal employees to kick off the new year has led to a sizable increase in OPM’s backlog of retirement applications.

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

About the Author

Ian Smith is one of the co-founders of FedSmith.com. He has over 20 years of combined experience in media and government services, having worked at two government contracting firms and an online news and web development company prior to his current role at FedSmith.