While last month the Office of Personnel Management’s retirement application backlog increased sharply, in February it was reduce by approximately 6 percent.
OPM processed 10,025 retirement claims last month, reducing the inventory to 19,591. The agency’s “steady state goal” of pending applications is 13,000.
RELATED: Lawmakers Request Answers to OPM Retirement Application Backlog
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.
OPM’s Processing Time of Retirement Applications
The monthly average processing time for February decreased to 47 days — down from 66 days in January and down from 65 days a year ago.
Note: The processing times are provided by OPM, and are an average. An individual applicant’s time may vary.
SEE ALSO:
- How to Deal With OPM’s Delay in Retirement Application Processing
- How to Submit a Healthy Federal Retirement Application Package
CSRS/FERS New Claims Processing Time
Below is the latest chart and table from OPM showing the progress for the last year.
Disability determinations are included in the pending number after approval. Average Processing Time in Days represents the number of days starting when OPM receives the retirement application through final adjudication.
*Initial retirement cases produced in less than 60 days, on average took 29 days to complete; whereas cases that were produced in more than 60 days, on average, took 135 days to complete.
Most Common Federal Retirement Application Errors
The backlog of processing retirement applications at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has been a challenge for the agency for many years.
OPM’s Retirement Services recently conducted an analysis on the most common errors in submitted retirement applications from federal employees.
Federal employees nearing retirement are encouraged to review the data below in order to lessen the possible delay in receiving their benefits after the application is submitted.
Below are the errors recorded from Fiscal Year 2019 through July of 2021 (not including any errors found while OPM’s audit was suspended from December 2020 through March 2021).
OPM said the results of the analysis show significant increases in the following error types, which amount to more than 1.8% of total errors for each year, for retirement packages received under both FERS and CSRS.