OPM retirement backlog climbs in January

Workforce

OPM retirement backlog climbs in January

As is typical for the beginning of the year, retirement claims spiked at the Office of Personnel Management, but the number was slightly smaller than expected. The...

Michael O'Connell@moconnellWFED

February 5, 2015 2:15 pm

2 min read

The Office of Personnel Management received slightly fewer claims than it expected to for the month of January, according to new figures released on Thursday.

OPM predicted that it would receive 19,000 claims for the month and instead received 18,629. At the same time, the agency processed fewer claims than it expected to — 7,662 compared to the 8,700 for which it planned.

This lower number of claims processed led to a higher number of unprocessed claims in OPM’s inventory. Although it planned to have 21,642 in its inventory, it ended January with 22,636 unprocessed claims, about 1,000 more than expected.

The larger inventory is in sharp contrast to the previous month’s figures. OPM ended 2014 with its smallest backlog in more than a year — 11,669 unprocessed claims.

This difference was something OPM anticipated, though. The number of retirement claims typically spike in January, as many federal employees file for retirement in order to receive a higher lump-sum leave payment, which will also be charged to the 2015 tax year instead of 2014.

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OPM has been tracking and reporting on progress toward cutting the retirement backlog since January 2012. At that 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 2014, OPM started reporting the percentage of claims it processed within 60 days. That percentage has steadily climbed month-to-month, from 76.6 percent in May to 83.7 percent at the end of December. However, with the large number of claims received and lower-than-expected number processed, the percentage of claims processed within 60 days dropped in January to 80.2 percent.

Looking ahead to February, OPM expects to receive 9,700 new claims and process 9,800 for the month. It expects to finish with 21,542 unprocessed claims in its backlog.

Retirement claims take a dip in November, OPM says