For millions of retirees, Social Security isn’t just a nice extra. It keeps about 22 million Americans above the poverty line, including more than 16 million adults 65 and older.
When the system slows down, real people start to feel it fast.
So the agency’s latest report card sounds like good news. Social Security says it has cut wait times, moved more services online, and sped up disability claims.
But federal workers and senior advocates warn that the shiny numbers may be hiding some real problems.
The 3 changes Social Security is touting
The agency laid out its results on Oct. 23, calling fiscal 2026 the best performance in its history.
The biggest headline was the phone line. The average wait on the national 800 number fell to 5.6 minutes, down from 28 minutes in fiscal 2024. Average waits at field offices fell by more than 30%, even as offices served nearly 30 million visitors.
Also read: Social Security announces new cost-of-living adjustment for 2027
The online side has grown fast. Just over 105 million people now have a “my Social Security account,” about 20% more than in fiscal 2024, the Social Security Administration reported.
Commissioner Frank Bisignano attributed a lot of the progress to going “digital-first.” He said that plan is behind the “transformational improvements” people are seeing.
Disability claims may hit closest to home for a lot of families. Getting a first decision now takes about 40 fewer days than it did in fiscal 2024. That works out to a 17% improvement. The stack of claims still waiting shrank, too, from close to 1.2 million down to 911,000.
The improvements come as checks are about to get bigger. The 2027 cost-of-living adjustment is 3.6%, which lifts the average retired worker’s monthly benefit by about $75, as reported by TheStreet.
Nearly 72 million beneficiaries will see the raise starting in late 2026 and early 2027, with SSI recipients getting theirs on Dec. 31.
Why insiders aren’t celebrating yet
The union that represents Social Security workers sees a different picture. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 35,000 agency employees, has raised alarms about what’s happening behind the numbers.
Staffing is the main worry. Social Security has about 50,000 employees, its lowest headcount in decades, and it lost more than 7,000 workers in 2025 alone, as reported by Federal News Network.
Counting this year’s departures, the net loss is nearly 8,000 workers since President Donald Trump took office.
More than 2,000 employees were moved to the 800 number, pulling them away from claims processing and field office help. “We are simply bleeding staff,” said Jessica LaPointe of AFGE Council 220, according to Federal News Network.
The union wants Congress to pay for 20,000 more hires, though Bisignano told lawmakers in June that the agency has “the right amount of staff in the right places.”
The union also wants more transparency about how the agency measures service. Retirement consultant Marcia Mantell has made a similar point, noting that automated phone menus can make wait times look shorter and that callback times aren’t reported. She also said walk-in limits may help explain shorter office waits.
Here’s the catch with those phone numbers. People who choose a callback don’t count toward the average wait.
Social Security’s inspector general found that those callbacks were taking more than an hour as of September 2025. If you’re the one sitting by the phone, a 5.6-minute average doesn’t mean much.
Not every retiree lives online
The push toward digital services raises another question: What happens to people who can’t easily use them?
“I think it’s great that Social Security is embracing technology; however, it comes with the risk of leaving some of our most vulnerable citizens behind if we don’t also provide alternatives,” Christina Bremner, founder of senior living database Purple Door Finders, told MoneyWise.
“We can’t forget that millions of seniors struggle with technology and lack access to internet devices,” she added.
More Social Security:
- Social Security’s next COLA could erode on arrival
- Social Security’s estimator makes one costly assumption
- Social Security’s biggest check locks out most retirees
The data backs up her concern. Only about 61% of Americans 65 and older owned a smartphone in early 2021, roughly a quarter didn’t use the internet at all, and only 64% had broadband at home. That leaves a big group of retirees who could struggle with an online-first system.
Funding hasn’t kept pace with demand, either. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculated that inflation-adjusted customer service funding fell 19% from 2010 to 2024 while the number of beneficiaries rose 25%.
AARP has pushed Congress to fund more front-line staff and keep field offices open.
Going online also brings new risks. Government impersonation complaints to the FTC topped 330,000 in 2025, up 25% from the prior year, and Social Security is one of the agencies scammers copy most often, said personal finance expert Dave Ramsey, according to TheStreet.
Ramsey has warned that criminals who steal a Social Security number can even “file for a giant tax refund on your behalf.”
What Social Security beneficiaries can do now
If you’re comfortable going online, setting up a Social Security account is still worth it. The site now runs around the clock, after previously going offline for about 29 hours a week, and online transactions jumped 20% in fiscal 2025. That can save you a long wait on hold.
Prefer talking to a real person? Then give yourself extra time. Book field office visits well ahead, jot down the date of every call, and don’t be shy about following up when a promised callback never comes.
Things can still drag. Mantell said one of her clients waited more than 70 days on an initial claim, and a seven-month wait for a disability decision is still a long time.
Scams are worth watching, too. The inspector general’s office advises deleting any unexpected email that claims to be from Social Security and reporting it. “Awareness is one of the strongest tools we have,” the office has said.
Better service only matters if it gets to the people who need it most.
Related: Social Security just changed for anyone nearing retirement
