The Claim

Answered 65% more calls to the Social Security Administration compared to the prior year.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

That the Social Security Administration handled 65% more phone calls in the relevant period (FY2025) compared to the prior year (FY2024). The claim attributes this to the Trump administration’s management of SSA.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That the administration improved SSA’s phone service — that more Americans were able to get help when they called. The word “answered” implies human interaction, suggesting the administration staffed up or improved efficiency to handle more calls. In the context of the “Making Government Work for the People” section, it implies this represents better government service delivery under Trump’s leadership. The reader is meant to conclude that SSA phone service improved.

What is conspicuously absent?

Seven critical facts: (1) The primary driver of the 65% increase in call volume was the Social Security Fairness Act, signed into law on January 5, 2025 — a bipartisan law that affected 3.2 million beneficiaries and generated massive call surges, not any administrative improvement. (2) Of the calls SSA “handled,” 37% were processed by automated systems, not human agents — the claim does not distinguish between an IVR system playing a recorded message and a person actually resolving someone’s problem. (3) Approximately 25 million calls in FY2025 ended without the caller receiving any service at all — disconnections, unanswered callbacks, and busy signals. (4) The SSA’s reported “average speed of answer” metric counts callers who accept a callback as having zero wait time, dramatically understating actual waits. The SSA OIG found real callback wait times averaged 1 hour 49 minutes, and callers who held on the line waited an average of 59 minutes — versus the 15.9-minute “average speed of answer” SSA publicly reported. (5) The administration simultaneously cut approximately 7,000 SSA employees (12% of the workforce) — the largest staffing cut in SSA’s history — and reassigned approximately 1,000 field office workers to phone duty, degrading in-person services. (6) SSA removed key performance metrics from its website in summer 2025, making independent verification of its claims more difficult. (7) By early 2026, wait times had begun climbing again, with phone waits stretching past an hour in some cases following the March 7, 2026 consolidation of field offices into a national system.

Padding Analysis: SSA Phone Service Cluster (Items 248-250)

Items 248, 249, and 250 form a three-item cluster about SSA phone and benefit service that could have been a single claim. Item 248 claims “65% more calls answered.” Item 249 claims “reduced average speed of answer to single digits.” Item 250 claims “enhanced Social Security for our great seniors.” All three describe aspects of the same underlying set of actions — SSA phone operations during FY2025 — sliced into three separate “wins.” The call volume increase (248) is the denominator for the wait time improvement (249), and both are presented as evidence of better service (250). This is textbook padding: one story told three times to inflate the wins count.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

SSA handled approximately 68 million calls in FY2025, a 65% increase from FY2024. The SSA Office of the Inspector General’s December 2025 audit report confirmed that SSA served 68 million callers in FY2025 — either by an SSA employee or by automation — representing a 65% increase from FY2024. The 65% figure in the claim is factually accurate as a measure of total call volume handled. ¹

The call volume surge was primarily driven by the Social Security Fairness Act, not by any administrative improvement. The Social Security Fairness Act of 2023, signed into law on January 5, 2025, repealed the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO), affecting more than 3.2 million beneficiaries. This generated massive call volume: January 2025 saw 9.8 million calls and March 2025 saw 10.4 million — the highest months in SSA’s recent history. The OIG report attributed “much of that increase” to the Social Security Fairness Act. The law was bipartisan legislation passed by Congress and signed by Biden; the Trump administration implemented it but did not initiate it. ²

Approximately 25 million calls in FY2025 ended without the caller receiving any service. The OIG audit found that about 25 million calls ended without service because callers disconnected, did not answer SSA’s callback attempt, SSA could not complete the callback, or all lines were busy. These 25 million unserved calls are excluded from SSA’s performance metrics. This means that of the approximately 93 million total calls to SSA in FY2025, more than one in four callers received no service at all. ³

SSA’s publicly reported “average speed of answer” dramatically understated actual wait times. The OIG found that SSA’s average speed of answer (ASA) was 15.9 minutes for FY2025, down from 27.9 minutes in FY2024. However, the ASA metric counts callers who accept a callback offer as having zero wait time. When actual wait times are measured, the picture is starkly different: callers who remained on hold waited an average of 59 minutes; callers who opted for callbacks waited an average of 1 hour 49 minutes. In January 2025, callback wait times peaked at 2 hours 32 minutes. Sen. Elizabeth Warren stated that actual wait times were “more than three times higher than what Commissioner Bisignano claimed.” ⁴

37% of FY2025 calls were handled by automated systems, not human agents. The OIG report found that automation handled 37% of calls in FY2025, up from a much smaller share in FY2024 (approximately 300,000 per month in FY2024 vs. 2.9 million per month in FY2025). Only 35% of calls were handled by SSA employees. The claim “answered 65% more calls” does not distinguish between an automated message about the Social Security Fairness Act and a human agent resolving a beneficiary’s problem. ⁵

SSA simultaneously cut approximately 7,000 employees — the largest staffing reduction in SSA history. From January to November 2025, SSA’s workforce shrank by 6,645 employees (over 11%), from approximately 57,000 to approximately 50,000. This was described by CBPP as “the largest-ever Social Security staffing cut.” To partially compensate for the staffing loss on phone lines, SSA reassigned approximately 1,000 field office workers to handle 800-number calls, increasing phone agents by 25% but stripping field offices of staff needed for in-person services and claims processing. ⁶

The phone reassignment degraded other SSA services. NPR reported that claims specialists — who finalize benefit applications — were pulled from their regular duties to answer the 800 number. Field office workers reported going from “doing the work of 1.8 people” to handling the workload of “10 to 15.” Disability appointment availability within 30 days dropped from 87% to 66%. Six million cases were backlogged in processing centers and 12 million transactions backed up in field offices. Experts warned that phone improvements “may mask deterioration in other services” since “customers can’t actually complete their business on the phone” and ultimately need field office processing. ⁷

SSA removed key performance metrics from its website in summer 2025. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s September 2025 investigation found that SSA had “removed key metrics, information from [its] website” over the summer, including callback wait times and other service quality indicators. This prompted the Warren-requested OIG audit that ultimately revealed the discrepancy between reported and actual wait times. The metrics removal made independent verification of SSA’s claims more difficult precisely when the administration was publicly touting improvements. ⁸

Strong Inferences

The 65% figure conflates increased demand with improved service delivery. The claim is structured to imply that SSA “answered” more calls because the administration made the agency work better. But the 65% increase in call volume was driven by external demand (the Social Security Fairness Act) and by routing more calls through automated systems. The administration did not add capacity to handle more calls; it faced a demand surge it did not create, partially addressed it with automation and staff reassignment, and claimed the resulting volume as an achievement. This is analogous to an emergency room claiming it “treated 65% more patients” during a pandemic — the volume increase reflects the crisis, not improved care. ⁹

By early 2026, phone service improvements were already reversing. As of March 2026, phone wait times were stretching past an hour again. The March 7, 2026 consolidation of SSA’s 1,250 field offices into a national phone system created new disruptions. The SSA planned to cut field office visits by 50% in FY2026, aiming for no more than 15 million visits (down from 31.6 million in FY2025). The combination of continued staffing losses, consolidation disruption, and a 17% increase in filing volume was eroding the phone metric gains achieved in mid-to-late 2025. ¹⁰

What the Evidence Shows

The 65% figure is real. SSA did handle approximately 68 million calls in FY2025, compared to roughly 41 million in FY2024. That much is established by the SSA’s own Inspector General. The claim, taken at face value as a bare statistic, is accurate.

But the claim is engineered to create a false impression. The 65% increase was not the result of the administration improving SSA’s phone operations. It was primarily the result of the Social Security Fairness Act — a bipartisan law signed by President Biden on January 5, 2025 — generating a massive surge in calls from 3.2 million affected beneficiaries. The administration responded to this demand surge not by hiring more agents (it was simultaneously cutting 7,000 employees) but by expanding automation (which handled 37% of calls) and by reassigning approximately 1,000 field office workers to the phone lines. The claim counts an automated recording about the Social Security Fairness Act the same as a human agent resolving a disability claim.

The metric itself is misleading even on its own terms. The SSA OIG found that approximately 25 million calls — more than one in four — ended without the caller receiving any service. When callers did connect, the “average speed of answer” SSA publicly reported (15.9 minutes) excluded the actual wait times experienced by the majority of callers. Those who opted for callbacks waited an average of 1 hour 49 minutes. Those who held on the line waited an average of 59 minutes. SSA achieved its headline metric by counting callback acceptances as “zero wait time” — a methodology that, as the OIG documented, “no longer fully represent[s] the caller experience.”

Most revealing is what happened behind the phone metric. The administration cut 7,000 SSA employees, reassigned field office staff to phone duty, and then pointed to the phone numbers while service quality deteriorated across every other dimension: 6 million cases backlogged in processing centers, 12 million transactions backed up in field offices, disability appointment availability dropping from 87% to 66%, and in-person wait times climbing. SSA removed callback wait times and other service quality metrics from its website — the metrics that would have revealed the full picture — and then touted the one metric it had engineered to look good.

The Bottom Line

The 65% call volume increase is factually accurate but deeply misleading as a measure of government performance. The surge was driven by the bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act, not by administrative improvement. Of the calls “answered,” 37% were handled by automation, 25 million ended without service, and those who did reach a human often waited an hour or more — a fact SSA obscured by counting callback requests as “zero wait time.” Meanwhile, the administration was simultaneously executing the largest staffing cut in SSA’s 90-year history, reassigning field office workers to phone duty, removing inconvenient metrics from the SSA website, and presiding over massive backlogs in claims processing and in-person services. The claim selects the one metric that external demand and accounting methodology made look good, while suppressing the comprehensive picture of an agency under severe strain from the administration’s own workforce cuts.

This is also the first of three SSA items (248, 249, 250) that slice a single mixed-results story into three separate “wins” — classic padding.

Footnotes

1. SSA OIG, “Audit Report: Customer Wait Times in the Social Security Administration’s National 800 Number,” December 2025. https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/152307.pdf. Nextgov/FCW, “SSA phone wait times longer than publicly reported metrics, per OIG report,” December 2025. https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/12/ssa-phone-wait-times-longer-publicly-reported-metrics-oig-report/410360/ ↩

2. Congress.gov, “H.R.82 - Social Security Fairness Act of 2023.” https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/82. SSA, “Social Security Fairness Act: Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) update.” https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/social-security-fairness-act.html. NAPA Net, “How Did Social Security Customer Service Fare in 2025?” January 2026. https://www.napa-net.org/news/2026/1/how-did-social-security-customer-service-fare-in-2025/ ↩

3. SSA OIG, “Audit Report: Customer Wait Times in the Social Security Administration’s National 800 Number,” December 2025. https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/152307.pdf. Empire Justice Center, “OIG Audit Reveals Gaps in SSA’s Public Metrics,” 2025. https://empirejustice.org/resources_post/office-of-the-inspector-general-oig-audit-reveals-gaps-in-ssas-public-metrics/ ↩

4. SSA OIG, “Audit Report: Customer Wait Times in the Social Security Administration’s National 800 Number,” December 2025. https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/152307.pdf. Nextgov/FCW, “SSA phone wait times longer than publicly reported metrics, per OIG report,” December 2025. https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/12/ssa-phone-wait-times-longer-publicly-reported-metrics-oig-report/410360/. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, “Investigation Reveals Trump’s Social Security Administration Removed Key Metrics, Information from Website,” September 5, 2025. https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-investigation-reveals-trumps-social-security-administration-removed-key-metrics-information-from-website ↩

5. SSA OIG, “Audit Report: Customer Wait Times in the Social Security Administration’s National 800 Number,” December 2025. https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/152307.pdf. NAPA Net, “How Did Social Security Customer Service Fare in 2025?” January 2026. https://www.napa-net.org/news/2026/1/how-did-social-security-customer-service-fare-in-2025/ ↩

6. CNBC, “Social Security plans to cut about 7,000 workers. That may affect benefits,” March 3, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/03/social-security-plans-to-cut-about-7000-workers-that-may-affect-benefits.html. Center for American Progress, “The Social Security Administration Is Bleeding Staff,” February 1, 2026. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-social-security-administration-is-bleeding-staff/. CBPP, “Reassignment Won’t Fix the Largest-Ever Social Security Staffing Cut.” https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/reassignment-wont-fix-the-largest-ever-social-security-staffing-cut ↩

7. NPR, “Efforts to shrink Social Security’s phone wait times are putting a strain elsewhere,” July 22, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/nx-s1-5475151/social-security-phone-wait-staffing-crunch. Federal News Network, “How the DOGE-driven reductions at the Social Security Administration are playing out now,” July 2025. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2025/07/how-the-doge-driven-reductions-at-the-social-security-administration-are-playing-out-now/. 24/7 Wall St., “Social Security Wait Time Jumps To An Hour,” February 19, 2026. https://247wallst.com/income/2026/02/19/social-security-wait-time-jumps-to-an-hour/ ↩

8. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, “Investigation Reveals Trump’s Social Security Administration Removed Key Metrics, Information from Website,” September 5, 2025. https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-investigation-reveals-trumps-social-security-administration-removed-key-metrics-information-from-website. Nextgov/FCW, “SSA phone wait times longer than publicly reported metrics, per OIG report,” December 2025. https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/12/ssa-phone-wait-times-longer-publicly-reported-metrics-oig-report/410360/ ↩

9. SSA OIG, “Audit Report: Customer Wait Times in the Social Security Administration’s National 800 Number,” December 2025. https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/152307.pdf. Newsweek, “Social Security Shares Update On Phone Service.” https://www.newsweek.com/social-security-shares-update-on-phone-service-11264936 ↩

10. Newsweek, “Social Security Making Customer Service Changes in March 2026.” https://www.newsweek.com/social-security-recipients-face-shake-up-in-just-weeks-11558635. Federal News Network, “The Social Security Administration plans to cut field office visits by 50%,” December 2025. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/12/the-social-security-administration-plans-to-cut-field-office-visits-by-50-what-it-means-for-you/ ↩