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The Social Security Administration is reportedly drafting plans to lay off thousands more employees overseeing benefits for the nation’s seniors as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, even as it has struggled with reports of poor customer service following the loss of 7,000 workers who have left or been fired from the agency already this year.
Under the direction of Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, the agency is looking at cuts across a variety of departments, including communications, personnel, legislative affairs, and retirement and disability policy.
“It’s just cut, cut, cut,” an official told The Washington Post, which reported on the plan.
Employees received an email this week offering voluntary reassignments to “mission-critical” roles like answering calls from beneficiaries and adjudicating claims as the agency eyes a wider reorganization, per the paper.
“We are proceeding with plans that may include abolishment of organizations and positions, directed reassignments, and reductions in force (RIF),” the email read.
The Independent has contacted the agency for comment.
Social Security has been a consistent focus of Musk, who has frequently and inaccurately claimed that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” sending millions of dead people checks.
(Less than one percent of the agency’s payments between 2015 and 2022 were improper, according to a 2024 inspector general report.)
In the face of continued layoffs and buyouts at Social Security, customer service has reportedly plunged, with the agency’s websites crashing, online accounts malfunctioning, and callers being forced to endure long waits.
The DOGE era at the agency has involved more granular changes, like ending direct deposit payments and ID verification over the phone for Social Security users. Musk’s outfit has also attracted legal attention.
This week, an appeals court blocked DOGE from accessing sensitive Social Security data, and a lawsuit challenged the staff reductions at the agency.
The Trump administration could end up rehiring as many as 20 percent of the agency employees it fires as part of the DOGE initiative, according to Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“At DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning … we’re going to do 80 percent cuts, but 20 percent of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we’ll make mistakes,” Kennedy told reporters on Thursday at an event in Virginia, Politico reports.
