Trump’s cuts to Social Security and massive layoffs are taking their toll on workers, “The attrition rate has been staggering”

Donald Trump unleashed the Department of Government Efficiency to cut costs and waste in the federal government upon becoming president for a second time. Headed by his biggest financial backer in the 2024 campaign, Elon Musk, DOGE took a chainsaw to agencies slashing staff and in some cases completely eliminating agencies.

The Social Security Administration was no exception, with roughly 7,000 staff members laid off or given payouts to retire early, offices shuttered, and whole departments liquidated. This has lead to longer wait times for those who have tried to call the help line and hours-long queues at offices making it difficult for claimants to apply for benefits and recipients to resolve issues.

It has also taken a toll on remaining staff who have been moved away from their core jobs to answer the agency’s national 1-800 number. In a recent survey of SSA employees, 65% reported service quality had declined over the last year and 70% said that service speed had reduced.

“The attrition rate has been staggering”

Earlier this year, a thread was started on Reddit asking “How are things at Social Security Administration these days?” which got a lengthy reply from one former SSA employee who recently quit. Commentator ‘MakerChic’ shared that they had worked for the agency for 14 years, but that they had had enough after mounting problems.

The former lead service representative explained that since the covid pandemic their office had lost almost half of the office staff, around 12 of total 26 staff at the time. “The attrition rate has been staggering,” they said.

"Workloads are [insurmountably] massive, systems and policies changing seemingly daily, anxiety of the public being pushed to do so much online, with Id.me or login.gov constantly locking people out of their access,” MakerChic explained. They said that where there had once been four people in their department, there were now only two, and the pressure on them “was soul crushingly worse than before the pandemic.”

Previously, they were given six hours each week to handle non-walk-in caseload assignments that were sent in by mail, like “earnings corrections, Medicare enrollments, death notifications, representative payee applications etc.” the new policy of having every office man the 1-800 number meant that MakerChic could no longer take care of those assignments, instead they were made to dedicate their full 8-hour shift to answering phone calls.

MakerChic shared that over the past six years that they suffered from irritable bowel syndrome and had several episodes of acute depression. They said it was a miracle that they hadn’t developed cancer from the stress. However, now that they’ve quit, “I’m so relieved that I finally had the courage to leave,” MakerChic said.

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