OPM: Retirement backlog drops despite increase of claims
More retirement claims were processed in November than in the two months prior, but OPM still has work to do as 2019 approaches.
The Office of Personnel Management saw a large reduction in its federal retirement backlog in November. More claims were also processed last month than in October or September, said the latest retirement report.
OPM received more than 7,500 new claims last month — a significant increase over this time in years past. November 2016 only added 5,065 claims and November 2017 had produced 5,572. Still, the agency was able to successfully process more than 8,000 claims this year. This has helped them reduce the retirement backlog by nearly three percent.
The inventory remains more than 6,000 over the agency’s steady state, which currently sits at 13,000.
The closest OPM has been to that steady goal was in February 2017 — when it fell to 14, 515. The backlog is almost 600 claims less than last month and one step closer to its steady state, as long as the agency continues to process more retirement claims than are received in the new few months.
Nine months after the highest inventory in recent years — February 2018 added more than 13,000 claims alone, bringing the bank to over 24,000 — more than 70 percent of claims have been processed within 60 days or less. This too is a step up of about 13 percent from this time last year, according to the OPM report.
As of November 2018, the average number of days it takes to process each retirement claim falls between 45 and 99.
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Steff Thomas
Steff Thomas is a digital editor at Federal News Network.
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