April retirement claims lower than expected, OPM says

6,600 federal employees filed retirement claims in April — 1,400 less than what was projected for the month by the Office of Personnel Management.

More than 6,600 federal employees filed retirement claims in April — 1,400 less than the Office of Personnel Management’s projection for the month.

April is the first month in 2012 in which actual claims filed were less than OPM’s projections.

OPM also overestimated the number of claims it would process in April. The projected number of processed claims was 8,300, while the agency actually processed 8,028.

However, OPM continued to make progress chipping away at a longstanding backlog of retirement claims. The agency finished April with a backlog of 51,016 claims to process — a 17 percent drop since the start of 2012. The personnel agency projects it will be able to cut its backlog in half by March of next year.

In 2011, 104,810 retirement applications were filed by federal employees — a 24 percent increase over 2010 levels.

OPM expects another 100,000 claims to be filed in 2012. So far, in the first four months of 2012, OPM has received a total of 41,600 claims.

2012 Retirement Claims

Month Projected claims Actual claims
January 21,000 21,479
February 5,600 6,415
March 5,000 7,090
April 8,000 6,616

Data from OPM.

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