Just as OPM was improving processing times for retirees, federal workers who accepted the Deferred Retirement Program has increased the number of applications, pushing backlogs to numbers not seen since COVID.
Records show that 20,344 new retirement claims were received by OPM in October while the number of applications processed that month were 8,751. This increased the backlog by nearly 35,000 pending claims. This also boosted the average time for OPM to process a retirement application to 79 days, nearly double the average time seen in February.
OPM Director, Scott Kupor, stated the agency would work to get interim pay released quicker. The interim pay is approximately 80% of an applicant’s anticipated annuity amount out. This is a welcome trade-off, especially since the backlog may stay at these high numbers due to an expected spike in applications in January. As part of the DRP, a group of employees were allowed to stay on paid leave through the end of the calendar year in order to reach retirement eligibility and will be filing their paperwork in January. Once that group goes through, there is hope that the system will catch up and revert back to the faster processing times of the prior year.