Social Security Drops 3-Day Hold on Benefit Claims by Phone

The agency said it would instead use new software to verify callers’ identity and flag indicators of fraud risk when someone applies for benefits by phone. The three-day hold on new claims was part of that system, implemented April 14. With that discontinued, “we will refine the anti-fraud algorithm to flag only the cases with the highest probability of fraud,” an SSA spokesperson said.

Less than 1 percent of Social Security benefit payments are “improper,” meaning in the wrong amount or to the wrong person, according to federal reports on payment accuracy. Of that amount, about 3 percent is attributable to fraud, the SSA’s inspector general found in a February 2025 report; the vast majority are due to factors such as computation errors or beneficiaries not reporting earnings that could affect their payment amount.

More claims, growing backlog

Publicly available SSA performance data shows 597,022 pending claims for retirement and survivor benefits and Medicare in April, compared to 364,277 in September. Over the same period, the share of people receiving benefits within two weeks of applying has declined from 86 percent to 81 percent. In a May 14 email to SSA employees, the agency’s deputy commissioner for operations said about 140,000 pending claims are at least 60 days old.

The SSA spokesperson said the backlog is primarily due to the “peak 65” phenomenon of the last and largest cohort of boomers reaching retirement age. Another factor is the Social Security Fairness Act, a law passed late last year that boosted benefits and benefit eligibility for some 3 million former government workers, some of whom are now applying.

About 276,000 more people filed for retirement benefits in the first seven months of the 2025 federal fiscal year (October 2024 through April 2025) than in the same period a year earlier, according to the Urban Institute.

“We are prioritizing this workload to ensure timely processing,” the SSA spokesperson said. “It is normal for the agency to focus resources on processing specific workloads at different points throughout the year, as it is doing right now for retirement claims.”

The deputy commissioner for operations’ May 14 message called for a “sprint” to reduce the backlog, asking employees to increase their clearance of retirement, survivor and Medicare claims by 10 percent a day.

“It’s just proof that all of these new policies are not increasing efficiency, they’re decreasing efficiency,” says Price, a 26-year SSA veteran who currently works at a field office in Indiana. “We’ve always had backlogs for hearings and disability claims, but never like this for retirement claims.”