The annual surge of new retirement applications that come at the start of a calendar year has pushed the backlog of retirement claims to a level not seen since around this time last year at the Office of Personnel Management.
It will be interesting to see if February has as many new retirement applications as it did in 2018. Last year, over 13,000 new retirement applications came in February on top of the over 14,000 in January which gave the backlog a big boost.
If this report is any indication, it suggests that the shutdown that started just before Christmas did not increase the number of retirement applications to kick off the year (not so far anyway).
The latest complete retirement backlog statistics from OPM are included below.
| Month | Claims Received | Claims Processed | Inventory (Steady state goal is 13,000) | Monthly Average Processing Time in Days | FYTD Average Processing Time in Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct-17 | 8,850 | 6,818 | 18,860 | 64 | 64 |
| Nov-17 | 5,572 | 5,138 | 19,294 | 68 | 66 |
| Dec-17 | 5,568 | 10,347 | 14,515 | 60 | 63 |
| Jan-18 | 14,590 | 8,638 | 20,467 | 63 | 63 |
| Feb-18 | 13,290 | 9,532 | 24,225 | 46 | 59 |
| Mar-18 | 7,767 | 13,262 | 18,730 | 49 | 57 |
| Apr-18 | 8,390 | 9,631 | 17,489 | 58 | 57 |
| May-18 | 7,625 | 7,090 | 18,024 | 58 | 58 |
| Jun-18 | 9,397 | 9,223 | 18,198 | 65 | 59 |
| Jul-18 | 8,281 | 8,145 | 18,334 | 57 | 59 |
| Aug-18 | 8,826 | 9,647 | 17,513 | 56 | 58 |
| Sep-18 | 7,142 | 7,027 | 17,628 | 64 | 59 |
| Oct-18 | 9,012 | 6,911 | 19,729 | 63 | 63 |
| Nov-18 | 7,510 | 8,077 | 19,162 | 61 | 62 |
| Dec-18 | 5,782 | 6,925 | 18,019 | 60 | 61 |
| Jan-19 | 13,264 | 8,162 | 23,121 | 58 | 60 |
