The Office of Personnel Management’s retirement claims backlog remained basically the same in December as compared to November, but the number of days it took to process those claims ticked up to 57 from 55 days.

OPM also hit a new low in retirement claims received last month with 5,020. This is the lowest amount of claims received since November 2023.

Overall, 88,157 federal employees retired in 2024. That is down from 88,773 retirements in 2023. January continues to be the most popular month for federal employees to file retirement papers with February, March and August also seeing upticks in claims.

OPM says when it received retirement paperwork in less than 60 days, it processed those claims on average in about 38 days. But when it took more than 60 days to receive the retiree’s paperwork, it took, on average, 124 days to process those claims.

Overall, OPM says it dropped the average time it takes to process a claim to 57 days from a h igh of 66 last January.

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