The Office of Personnel Management’s retirement backlog spiked to 16,455 unprocessed claims in July, making it the first month the inventory hasn’t seen a decrease since February.

OPM received 9,862 claims in July — a total of 1,862 more than projected. While OPM expected to process 8,100 claims by the end of the month, it only made it through 7,918 — 182 less than its goal.

Slow processing and the spike in claims caused the inventory to grow by 1,944, increasing it by almost 12 percent from its June total at 14,551.

Since May, 2014, OPM has been tracking the number of claims it was processing in 60 days or less. In July, it processed 69 percent of its claims in that time frame, which is slightly more than the 68.7 percent it processed in June.

The processing rate has also decreased a total 14.7 percent from its record high of 83.7 percent OPM posted in November.

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