OPM Reduces Retirement Backlog 23% in March

After two months of rapid increases in the backlog of outstanding retirement claims, the Office of Personnel Management managed to make a sizable reduction in March.

The total backlog went from 24,225 to 18,730, a reduction of 23%. The progress was due to the fact that only 7,767 new claims came in and 13,262 were processed. In January and February, months where there is traditionally a surge of new applications, OPM received over 10,000 new claims each month, pushing the total backlog over 24,000.

The total backlog is now roughly back to where it was last October before the surge at the start of the year. The 13,262 cases that were processed is the most in one month that OPM has gone through in quite some time. Not since 2013 have that many been processed in a single month.

Also, this is the first month that OPM has gone exclusively to its new report format. The new format only shows the monthly average processing time and the fiscal year to date average processing time, both in number of days. OPM was including both the new and old formats during the transition phase.

The latest complete figures are included below.