The Office of Personnel Management in October received the lowest number of retirement claims in a month since April, but the agency’s claims backlog grew for the first time since June.

The reported inventory was 17,882 in October, 506 more claims than September. The backlog had previously been decreasing since 18,501 total claims were outstanding in June.

The October backlog is more than 4,500 claims above OPM’s “steady state” inventory goal of 13,000.

OPM received a total of 7,044 retirement claims in October, 412 fewer claims than September, and 1,968 fewer claims than last October.

OPM processed 6,538 total claims in October 2019, nearly 400 fewer processed claims than October 2018.

The monthly average processing time decreased from 63 days to 59 days year over year.

The year-to-date average processing time rose from 56 days to 59 days between September and October. The YTD average processing time in September was the shortest average processing time since October 2017.

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