OPM continued to make strides on retirement process in March

The Office of Personnel Management continued its rapid pace processing the annual deluge of early-year retirement claims, completing more than 10,000 requests for the second straight month.

OPM processed 10,711 retirement requests in March, an increase of nearly 700 claims over the previous month, and nearly 1,800 more than the same period a year ago. Combined with the number of new claims continuing its descent since January’s high-water mark of 12,997 to 7,943 last month, the overall backlog of pending claims fell from 19,591 in February to 16,823 last month.

That figure is a marked improvement over 2023, when OPM’s retirement backlog did not fall below 17,000 until June. At the end of March 2023, the backlog still sat at 22,925 pending claims. OPM’s target “steady state” of pending claims at any given time is 13,000.

Despite those gains, the average processing time for retirement claims measured on a monthly basis ticked up, from 47 days in February to 55 days last month. An overall average, measured since the fiscal year began in October, was 61 days as of the end of March, a slight improvement from the average 62 days measured the previous month.

For years, OPM’s retirement process has been embattled by complaints of opacity and sluggishness. Although a major reform—digitizing the process and federal personnel records—remains in development, a number of short-term fixes appear to have borne fruit amid this year’s retirement rush.

The agency has devoted additional staff and work hours to processing claims, while leadership has published a series of guides and checklists to both help federal workers better understand the process, including which agency is responsible for which phase, as well as to help them avoid common pitfalls when filling out the application, which is the biggest cause of processing delays.