The Office of Personnel Management made a noticeable improvement to the outstanding backlog of retirement claims in May.
OPM received 5,548 new claims in May but was able to process 8,340, 2% more than it processed in April. That led to bringing the backlog down from 18,932 to 16,140, a reduction of almost 15%.
OPM said that 44% of the retirement applications in May were processed in 60 days or less.
Despite the improvement, the backlog is still 13% higher than it was at this time last year when it stood at 14,035.
OPM has previously defined the “steady state” of the backlog to be 13,000. According to its strategic plan for processing retirement applications, “By having no more than 13,000 claims on hand, the staff will be able to adjudicate 90 percent of all the claims covered by this plan within 60 days.”
The last time the backlog was at 13,000 or less was at the end of December 2015.
The latest complete retirement applications processing 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 |
| Feb-17 | 9,114 | 8,285 | 23,916 | 38 | 104 |
| Mar-17 | 7,216 | 10,602 | 20,530 | 38 | 105 |
| Apr-17 | 6,581 | 8,179 | 18,932 | 51 | 80 |
| May-17 | 5,548 | 8,340 | 16,140 | 48 | 89 |
