Federal retirement claims spiked during the month of October, according to figures just released from the Office of Personnel Management.

During October, OPM received 10,155 new retirement claims, which was nearly 4,000 more than the 6,350 it received in September. It’s also the most claims OPM has received in a month since February, when it received 12,025.

The high number of claims in October is approximately 2,300 more than the 7,800 OPM projected it would receive for the month.

Even though OPM was able to process 8,785 claims during October, it ended the month with 14,137 unprocessed claims in its inventory, which is up from the 12,767 it had at the end of September. This reverses a 3-month trend in which OPM had finished the month with a smaller intentory than it had in the previous month.

The inventory of 14,137 unprocessed claims represents a reduction of more than 9,000 claims from the backlog’s peak of 23,554 in February.

OPM has been tracking and reporting on progress toward cutting the retirement backlog since January 2012. At the time, the backlog topped out at more than 60,000 claims and OPM was the subject of congressional criticism and federal employee frustration.

In May of this year, OPM started reporting the percentage of claims it processed within 60 days. In the six months so far reported, the percentage has climbed from 76.6 percent in May, around 77 percent in June and July, to 78.5 percent in August, to 78.8 percent in September, and now 83.2 percent in October.

Looking ahead to numbers for November, OPM expects to receive 7,600 claims and projects it will process 7,800.

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