OPM’s retirement backlog continued to creep higher in July

The federal government’s dedicated HR agency reported a slight uptick in its backlog of pending federal employee retirement claims for the second straight month in July.

Last month, the Office of Personnel Management reported that it received 6,451 new retirement requests, a decrease of roughly 450 cases from June. But despite increasing its output by more than 300 cases, processing 5,994 claims was not enough to stop the backlog from climbing from 15,340 in June to 15,797 last month.

OPM’s goal is a “steady state” backlog of 13,000 pending claims in any given month. Since the backlog hit an eight-year low of 14,035 in May, the backlog has increased by nearly 1,800 cases.

As a result, the monthly average processing time for a federal worker’s retirement request has increased from 61 days in May to 65 at the end of last month. Measured since the beginning of fiscal 2024 last October, the average wait time has remained static at 61 days since March.

A modest slowdown in processing times is not unexpected. Last year, as part of an effort to improve the retirement process, OPM planned to increase staffing devoted to processing claims on a seasonal basis to help handle the spike in applications that occurs between January and March each year. OPM also created a guide to help federal workers navigate the process and avoid common pitfalls.