The average number of days it took the Office of Personnel Management to process retirement claims saw a significant spike in July.
According to the latest data, the monthly average processing time in days looks pretty ugly compared to all of the other listed average processing times. July’s number shot up to 95 days, a 17% increase over June (81) and quite a bit higher than any other month going back to October 2018. The lowest figure in the same time period was 46 in February 2019.
OPM’s retirement case backlog only posted a slight increase despite this unusually higher processing time, however. It rose to 17,631, a gain of 1.14% over June. OPM received 6,819 new claims and processed 6,620 which helped lead the backlog slightly higher.
The backlog bottomed for 2019 at the end of the year, then saw its usual spike in January and February of this year. The current backlog is better than it has been for the last few years at this time. July of 2017 was the last time it was lower than where it is currently when it stood at 17,091.
The latest monthly data 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-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 |
| Feb-19 | 10,792 | 10,543 | 23,370 | 46 | 57 |
| Mar-19 | 10,048 | 13,217 | 20,201 | 50 | 55 |
| Apr-19 | 6,993 | 9,392 | 17,802 | 56 | 55 |
| May-19 | 7,877 | 8,451 | 17,228 | 62 | 56 |
| Jun-19 | 8,201 | 6,928 | 18,501 | 60 | 56 |
| Jul-19 | 8,000 | 8,088 | 18,413 | 55 | 56 |
| Aug-19 | 8,878 | 9,715 | 17,576 | 50 | 56 |
| Sep-19 | 7,456 | 7,656 | 17,376 | 57 | 56 |
| Oct-19 | 7,044 | 6,538 | 17,882 | 59 | 59 |
| Nov-19 | 7,822 | 7,314 | 18,390 | 62 | 61 |
| Dec-19 | 5,205 | 6,687 | 16,908 | 66 | 62 |
| Jan-20 | 17,134 | 10,059 | 23,983 | 58 | 61 |
| Feb-20 | 9,273 | 9,627 | 23,629 | 54 | 59 |
| Mar-20 | 6,566 | 8,931 | 21,264 | 61 | 60 |
| Apr-20 | 6,740 | 8,115 | 19,889 | 68 | 61 |
| May-20 | 6,648 | 8,360 | 18,177 | 83 | 64 |
| Jun-20 | 6,555 | 7,300 | 17,432 | 81 | 65 |
| Jul-20* | 6,819 | 6,620 | 17,631 | 95 | 68 |
Average Processing Time in Days represents the number of days starting when OPM receives the retirement application through final adjudication.
*Initial retirement cases produced in less than 60 days, on average took 43 days to complete; whereas cases that were produced in more than 60 days, on average, took 159 days to complete.
