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 Office of Personnel Management reported fewer retirement claims received last month, as well as fewer processed, compared to the month prior.
The Office of Personnel Management continued to make slight progress on reducing its backlog of retirement claims in August.
Recent Office of Personnel Management retirement numbers show less claims in July, an increase in claims processed and a decrease in processing time.
While April and May produced record low numbers, June took a different turn as OPM received more retirement claims with less being processed.
The Office of Personnel Management lacks a clear vision and a specific IT strategy to modernize its retirement claims process, the Government Accountability Office argued. OPM, however, attributes its challenges to a lack of funding, leadership and staffing challenges.
New retirement claims data from the Office of Personnel Management shows a reversal of previous trends around how fast the agency is processing cases.
The number of federal employees submitting retirement claims in March is holding steady from February, according to an update released by the Office of Personnel Management. Meanwhile, OPM increased the number of claims it was able to process last month, leading to a decrease in the backlog.
For now, the 35-day government shutdown does not seem to have caused a massive increase in federal retirement, despite predictions to the contrary.
More retirement claims were processed in November than in the two months prior, but OPM still has work to do as 2019 approaches.
For the third month in a row, the Office of Personnel Management’s retirement claims backlog has ticked upward.
Federal civilian employees are delaying retirement until an average age of 61.8 years, continuing a three year trend recorded by the Office of Personnel Management.
September saw fewer new retirement claims in September — 7,142 — than August — 8,826 — but OPM also processed fewer claims in that time than the month before.
The Office of Personnel Management processed more retirement claims than it received in August, which helped it to reduced its backlog to the lowest level since the end of April.
According to the Office of Personnel Management's monthly retirement report, June saw 23.2 percent more federal retirement claims than May and a roughly 53 percent more claims year over year.