Seniors suffer 'maddening' wait times for Social Security calls thanks to Trump’s mass layoffs

Since President Donald Trump's return to the White House nine months ago, his administration has — with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — brought mass layoffs to a variety of federal government agencies, from the National Weather Service (NWS) to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). And Trump has toyed with the idea of eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) altogether.

Another is the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA), which, according to Washington Post reporters Meryl Kornfield and Hannah Natanson, has become increasingly difficult to deal with.

In an article published on October 28, Kornfield and Natanson report, "Hours-long wait times. Endless looping music. Useless robot messages. Millions of seniors and disabled people call Social Security’s 1-800 number every month. What they experience is often maddening."

Trump claims that the downsizing of federal agencies is targeting "waste, fraud and abuse," but critics of the mass layoffs argue that his administration is making a range of agencies less efficient — including the SSA.

"The Trump Administration has said it is improving Social Security customer service and dramatically cutting wait times to build on a phone experience that callers have complained about even before Trump," Kornfield and Natanson explain. "But the agency's public reporting doesn't count the time people wait for callbacks from humans, and nearly three dozen callers who spoke with The Washington Post or let a reporter join their calls said their experiences have not matched the agency's claims. The average wait time for a callback peaked at about 2½ hours from January to March, according to internal agency data obtained by The Post."

The Post reporters add, "The average time dropped to about an hour since July, when the agency added more field office workers to the 1-800 number, even as the agency has sought to reduce its workforce by thousands."

Kornfield and Natanson's article is accompanied by actual recordings of frustrated seniors struggling to get help from the downsized SSA.

"Shelley McLean, a 68-year-old technical writer from Brookhaven, New York, had been waiting for months for $31,000 that Social Security owed her in attorney fees as part of a disability case," the Post journalists report. "She called on a Friday in August to check on it and was told her hold time would be 110 minutes. McLean ended up getting a callback about 200 minutes later, after she already had personal plans and couldn't answer the phone.… In Upland, California, last spring, 72-year-old Kathy Stecher began the process of applying for benefits."

Kornfield and Natanson continued, "On her first attempt, an automated voice told the retired public schoolteacher that the wait time would extend more than 120 minutes. Trying to be patient, she hung on — only for her call to be dropped after more than an hour. Determined to get her benefits, she kept trying. For the next four days, she phoned once a day. She called early, she called in the middle of the morning, and she called in the afternoon."

Read Meryl Kornfield and Hannah Natanson's full Washington Post article at this link (subscription required).