The Office of Personnel Management’s retirement application backlog continue it’s growth trend reaching more than 50,000 unprocessed claims in December — a more than 4% increase over November. The retirement application volume has been nearly triple the rate as last year.
The primary cause of the increase in retirement claims is the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the size of government. OPM Director Scott Kupor recently cited that 317,000 federal employees left the government in 2025. OPM recently implemented a digital retirement application system. While processing digital claims is faster, many paper claims are still coming in from federal agencies as the government transitions to the digital system.
Last month, House Democrats on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent Kuper a letter raising concerns about the “substantial delays following the Trump Administration’s implementation of the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) and other workforce reduction policies.”
“The influx of new retirement applications under the DRP, combined with government-wide RIFs and early-out packages have reduced both the capacity and staffing levels of agency human resources offices and supporting organizations. This has put the federal retirement system under enormous strain,” stated a House Representative in the letter.
The House Democrats asked Kupor to address these questions:
- What guidance has OPM provided to agencies to ensure that retiring employees who lost access to government email and internal systems can continue to communicate with human resources offices using personal contact information?
- What steps is OPM taking to address retirement applications that remain stalled at agencies or payroll providers and have not yet been transmitted to OPM for processing?
- How is OPM assessing the impact of agency human resources staffing reductions on retirement processing delays across the federal government?
- How does OPM track and account for delays that occur at agencies and payroll providers, rather than solely within OPM’s own retirement processing timelines?
- OPM has heavily advertised its new digital retirement tool, the Online Retirement Application (ORA), and promoted its role in retirement processing reform. Please provide a list of named agencies (with components when applicable) that have wholly adopted and launched ORA for their entire HR teams and workforce. For agencies that remain in interim status, please provide a list of agencies (by component when applicable) and what the adoption status is, and the estimate for full usage. Please also provide what number and percentage of current cases are and are not using ORA, what the reasons are for non-adoption and usage, and what steps remain to be taken by OPM and employing agencies for full implementation.
- Please list any step and/or discrete action under the end-to-end retirement processing process that is not captured by ORA.
- What has been the impact on OPM’s customer service and support for the existing retiree population amidst the growing number of new retirements, and have there been any staffing or work assignment changes within the components that manage this process since December 2024?
OPM’s Processing Time of Retirement Applications
The monthly average processing time for December (including both digital and paper applications) decreased to 71 days, down from 79 days in October. Note: The processing times are provided by OPM, and are an average. An individual applicant’s time may vary.
CSRS/FERS New Claims Processing Time
Below is the latest chart and table from OPM showing the progress for the several months.
OPM’s Retirement Services (RS) is working towards a fully digital retirement application process while working with agencies and payroll offices to update legacy processes. During this period of transition, RS is still receiving many new retirement claims on paper.
• In December RS Received 13,174 new retirement claims; of these 6,055 were digital and 7,119 were paper
According to OPM, the processing of digital cases is faster. With systematic checks of data, annuitants experience less delays due to missing information or incomplete packages.
• In December RS processed 9,428 new retirement claims; of these 3,506 were digital and 5,922 were paper.
• In December digital cases were processed in 40 days, and paper claims were processed in 81 days
OPM experiences its largest surges in retirement applications in January and February each year. OPM’s statistics indicate that about 26% of all retirement applications come in the first six weeks of the year.