Despite Fewer New Claims, Retirement Backlog Has Slight Uptick

Despite fewer incoming claims than the previous month, OPM’s retirement backlog moved slightly higher in September.

The backlog of retirement claims at the Office of Personnel Management saw a small increase in September despite fewer new claims coming in than during the previous month.

The latest backlog now stands at 17,628, .66% higher than in August and 4.75% higher than at the same time a year ago.

OPM received 7,142 new claims in September, 19% fewer than it did in August, yet it managed to make a sizable reduction in the backlog in August despite the higher number of incoming applications. Processing times were faster in August than in September which was likely a factor; 56 days on average versus 64.

OPM said in its FY 2018 – 2022 strategic plan that its goal going forward is to get the average retirement case processing time down to 60 days or less. In FY 2017, OPM processed retirement cases in 67 days on average. In FY 2018, it averaged 59 days for monthly case processing time. Clearly, the agency is making progress in this effort since this is a significant improvement over the previous fiscal year. It will be interesting to see if OPM can continue to meet or improve this goal over the next few years.

The latest complete data as published by OPM are included below.

MonthClaims ReceivedClaims ProcessedInventory (Steady state goal is 13,000)Monthly Average Processing Time in DaysFYTD Average Processing Time in Days
Oct-167,3265,79516,6776767
Nov-165,0655,72316,0196666
Dec-165,4836,40515,0977469
Jan-1715,3177,32723,0877571
Feb-179,1148,28523,9165667
Mar-177,21610,60220,5306166
Apr-176,5818,17918,9327267
May-175,5488,34016,1407167
Jun-176,1417,75114,5306867
Jul-1710,0707,50917,0916767
Aug-177,1367,10217,1256567
Sep-178,8109,10716,8286267
Oct-178,8506,81818,8606464
Nov-175,5725,13819,2946866
Dec-175,56810,34714,5156063
Jan-1814,5908,63820,4676363
Feb-1813,2909,53224,2254659
Mar-187,76713,26218,7304957
Apr-188,3909,63117,4895857
May-187,6257,09018,0245858
Jun-189,3979,22318,1986559
Jul-188,2818,14518,3345759
Aug-188,8269,64717,5135658
Sep-187,1427,02717,6286459

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.