OPM finished April with 7,647 retirement claims processed and a backlog of 16,077 pending claims. ArtMarie / Getty Images
OPM’s retirement backlog continued a four-month downward trend in April
Though the Office of Personnel Management’s backlog of pending federal retirement claims fell again last month, the pace of progress has slowed.
The Office of Personnel Management continued to make gains in its backlog of federal employees’ pending retirement applications, though progress has begun to slow.
The federal government’s dedicated HR agency processed 7,647 claims in April. That marks a sharp decrease from the 10,711 claims handled in March but remains above the 6,901 new claims OPM received last month.
Overall, the backlog of pending claims ticked down to 16,077 by the end of April, a decrease of roughly 750 from March’s backlog of 16,823. The federal government’s retirement backlog has fallen 23% since January, but remains short of OPM’s “steady state” goal of 13,000 pending claims.
The average time OPM took to process claims, measured on a monthly basis, crept up to 61 days in April. That’s a sizeable increase compared with February and March’s averages of 47 days and 55 days, respectively. In each of those months, OPM processed more than 10,000 claims.
Ahead of this year’s busy season for retirement applications, the agency planned increased staffing and work hours to cope with the deluge of new claims. That effort largely seems to have been successful—April’s backlog of 16,077 claims pales in comparison with the 20,384 pending claims at the same point in 2023.
OPM also launched a campaign last year to better inform federal workers about the process in an effort to avoid common mistakes they make when they file for retirement. The agency also planned for increased staffing and other additional resources to cope with the deluge of new claims.